Mass Media's Double Standard

This article attempts to explain why mass media (includingthe crap I keep seeing between 6:30-7:00 p.m. five nights a week on commercial television) is dedicated to the latest about Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc. etc., ad naseum (translation: me barf). From The guardian.co.uk/The Observer Why the media will hound the girls - but leave the boys alone The difficult and damaged lives of female celebrities are covered aggressively by the US media - but men in the same situation are treated completely differently Theresa Rebeck Sunday February 24 2008 In October 1999 the New Yorker magazine ran a picture of two pretty teenagers. They had way cute jewellery on, and they sort of loosely held onto pillows in which they were not even vaguely interested; they looked at the camera with a sultry teenage confidence as if to say, 'Ah, you've interrupted us in the middle of our girlish pillow fight but we all know this pillow-fight thing is really a sham, a wry set-up cooked up by this photographer to give some sort of narrative to a picture that is actually merely being taken because we're young and pretty and rich.' It is a sensational picture. The two girls are Paris and Nicky Hilton, and they were 18 and 15 years old at the time. They were also - we are told by the column of copy accompanying the photo - New York's new 'It' Girls. It's kind of a charming little piece about how their great-grandfather was Conrad Hilton, and how they now swan around New York. The issue that presented this fabulous picture of these two at the time completely unknown teenage girls was titled 'The Next Generation'. The premise being that, in the waning months of the 20th century, the New Yorker would tell us which rising stars we should take note of, as they were going to be 'big' in the New Millennium. Other folk who were featured in this issue were David Howell (an eight-year-old chess champion), Sergio Garcia (the golfer), Zadie Smith (babelicious young novelist), Haley Joel Osment (11-year-old movie star), Vincenzo Sarno (11-year-old football star) and McSweeney's, a literary quarterly begun by ultra-hip lit star David Eggers. To date, the one from which we've heard the most is Paris Hilton. Those New Yorker editors were definitely right about her. The question does remain, however: why would the New Yorker - the most literary of all literary magazines - run a picture of Paris Hilton in the first place? Why on earth is the New Yorker publishing puff pieces about pretty girls who go to parties? Does the New Yorker ever run photos of cute boys just because they're cute and they come from money and they go to lots of parties? Where are the puff pieces on Paris Hilton's brothers? (You didn't know she had brothers, did you? She does, though: she has two.) The evidence of the 'Next Generation' issue suggests that boys achieve, and girls are pretty. Zadie Smith is definitely an achiever, but she's also pretty. But I don't want to come down on the New Yorker for a cultural trend that infects every media outlet everywhere, it seems. The New York Times has recently decided that this is news. A piece by Alex Williams in the 17 February Style Section tells us that, 'Boys will be boys, girls will be hounded by the media.' It's a pretty interesting compilation of facts about how the media basically look the other way when the boys have a problem or two, but when the girls behave in much the same way, it's a free-for-all. For instance, when Owen Wilson attempts suicide, people are pretty sensitive about the fact that the actor and his family maybe need some privacy. When Britney Spears goes into hospital for treatment for mental illness, we don't get quite so much sensitivity from the press. Even, or maybe especially, when tragedy strikes, the boys get much better treatment. Heath Ledger's recent death, like that of River Phoenix, was handled with great care by the press. Anna Nicole Smith's not so much. When Kiefer Sutherland went to jail for drink-driving, you barely noticed it. When Paris Hilton went to jail - well, everyone on the planet knows what happened. I was actually staying at a friend's house in LA when that happened and believe it or not, my friend lives on Paris Hilton's street. One day some reporters knocked on the door and asked me what I thought of all the media coverage and did I think that Paris should be asked to move off the block? Apparently another neighbour was trying to get her kicked off her block because it was just too crazy having all those paparazzi and reporters swarming up and down the street all the time; did I think Paris should move? I wanted to say, 'Oh well, it's a free country and it's not like she's a sex offender - isn't she really just a pretty girl who parties a lot?' But I copped to the fact that I was just visiting my friend Lisa and when they found out I didn't actually live there, the reporters didn't care what I thought. It's just as well. I was about to also say: 'Maybe the people who should be forced to move off the street are you guys.' But back to the point. The New York Times reports that the reason there's this obsession with pretty girls making big public mistakes is that women really like to read about that, and look at pictures of pretty girls doing self-destructive things while wearing fabulous clothing. Seriously, People and Us and all the magazines that feature these kinds of stories are largely read by women, and women like reading about crazy behaviour when girls do it, but not boys. Like doting mothers, apparently, we believe the boys are really just a little rambunctious or something, and the less said the better. But women readers actually like to see pretty girls screw up, we're positively obsessed by it, to the degree that we want them to do drugs and get into drink-driving accidents and act like total freaks and end up in rehab or worse. In the interest of full disclosure, allow me to admit that of late I have become somewhat obsessed with the media obsession with these young women. I got it in my head about six years ago that I might write a novel about It Girls. So I started reading all these magazines, and looking at the pictures. Mostly, I conducted my research at the gym, where a lot of people leave these magazines lying around. So I would go through the left-over magazine rack, and find old copies of OK and Star and Life & Style, and try to get a sense of what the appeal was. My friend Julie calls these magazines 'crack', and she knows of what she speaks. Within no time, I had opinions about a lot of things I know nothing about. I could hold long discussions about whom I liked better, Angelina or Jen. I developed a preference for issues that covered the awards shows because it was so much fun to look at everyone wearing those pretty dresses. I found some It Girls boring (Britney - sorry, couldn't care less) and some fascinating (Lindsay Lohan - seems like a nightmare but what an actress). Before I started conducting my 'research' I spent my time at the gym listening to books on tape, or sometimes I even listened to lectures, say, about the fall of the Roman Empire. But bettering my mind was no longer on the agenda: all I wanted to know was who Cameron Diaz was dating. My husband, meanwhile, had no interest in these magazines, nor did my son, a 13-year-old who thinks that Jessica Alba is a really good actress, especially when she's wearing her superhero spandex. While both of them seem to be red-blooded heterosexuals they could not be less interested in the It Girl narrative of glamour and destruction. When I bring these magazines home, they couldn't care less. They don't look at the pictures of pretty girls in fabulous clothing; they don't read about Brad and Angelina; they don't even check out Rihanna on the red carpet. Not so long ago my feminist education taught me to ask the question: 'Is the gaze male?' The answer, apparently, is yes, which is why so many movies and television shows are about men, and not women. Our distorted media culture sees men as subjects and women as objects; in films Woody Allen gets older and older and still dates 20-year-old babes; movies about women are called 'chick flicks' and men make fun of them. Because women's stories are about women and men don't want to understand women; they want to look at women, as long as they're young and beautiful. Because the gaze is male. But if the gaze is male, then why don't guys want to look at endless pictures of gorgeous It Girls? Trust me, Britney Spears isn't dressing like a slut because she's trying to get the attention of a bunch of ladies at the gym. But it's the ladies at the gym who are buying. Why? Because Us and OK and Star and Life & Style are chick flicks. It Girls, apparently, are the objects of male desire who have found themselves in a chick flick. [Er, actually, it's just a matter of being brain washed by mass media marketing. Women buy this shit because that's what they see at the check-out counters at the supermarkets. Trust me, most women today don't have time to spend hours perusing the stacks of "literature" at their local library.] So we have created a culture that celebrates girls as sex objects, turned that into a cultural ideal, and moved it to the centre of a bunch of addictive narratives for women. It's not a brilliant equation, frankly; it's like turning athletes into meth heads and sending them out to play the Super Bowl. Whatever. In any case, I'm done with it. All these gorgeous young girls getting drunk and partying and sleeping around and ending up in rehab, or jail, or the morgue? Come on; there's a better equation out there; there has to be. Maybe somebody should buy Lindsay some books on tape. I recommend Our Mutual Friend. · Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck (HarperCollins) is published on 1 April