Gossip Magazines Chase Women Because It’s What Bitchy Women Demand
IN “Boys Will Be Boys, Girls Will Be Hounded by the Media,” the New York Times notices that “Men who fall from grace are treated with gravity and distance, while women in similar circumstances are objects of derision, titillation and black comedy.”
“Without a doubt, women get rougher treatment, less sensitive treatment, more outrageous treatment,” says Ken Sunshine, a publicist whose clients include Ben Affleck and Barbra Streisand.
“I represent some pretty good-looking guys, and I complain constantly about the way they’re treated and covered. But it’s absolutely harder for the women I represent.”
“Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover,” says Janice Min, the editor in chief of US Weekly. “You just don’t. It’s cover death. Women don’t want to read about men unless it’s through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup.”
Lee Hackett, managing editor of People magazine says: “If Britney weren’t a mother, this story wouldn’t be getting a fraction of attention it’s getting. The fact that the custody of her children is at stake is the fuel of this narrative. If she were a single woman, bombing around in her car with paparazzi following, it wouldn’t be the same.”
Roger Friedman, an entertainment reporter for FoxNews.com, said that female stars tend to make more-compelling stories because “they are more emotional and open” about their problems. Male stars, he said, tend to be “circumspect.”
Keep saying it and you might just belive it yourself. It’s guff. What men and women enjoy is to bitch about the great and good, to see them done down.
Not that you want such and such to suffer, rather you care so much for Britney/ Lindsay and Paris that you need to understand. Poor her. The pretence is of empathy, but the real shared feeling is of the celebrity coming down to the readers’ level. And then watching them fall some way below. Wring your hands. Pity. Shame. Bitch.
Gossip magazines are read by people who are either truly sad and are genuinely interested in Britney’s bald head or knickerless crotch, or by the Daily Mail demographic who live their life in state of morbid fear that beyond the office grope, evening glass of white wine and privet fence, women are having a great time and not contracting herpes.
Spite is all. But instead of the outright bitch we have the likes of limp-wristed Perez Hilton, the self-aggrandizing, worthy, flabby, ersazt Dorothy Parker worrying about Britney Spears being mentally ill or dying while celebrating how may people log onto his site because, like him, his readers all care.
Hypocrisy and bilge. Gossip magazine readers like to see women suffer. Heat is Hate, OK !is KO-ed and Hello! is oHell!.
The rest is just a lie…
Posted: 16th, February 2008 | In: Celebrities Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
