Even as Celebrities, Women Face a Double Standard

By Vanessa Richmond, The Tyee. Posted July 5, 2008.

The tabloids paint Britney Spears' as a neglectful, deranged, drug-addicted mother who frequently neglects and even endangers her children, and whose partying ways are responsible for her demise. The video and images of Amy Winehouse smoking crack cocaine have been widely circulated, along with a flurry of recent articles alleging that her frequent drug use is to blame for the decline of her health -- including emphysema and her stark emaciation.

But a video of Heath Ledger hanging out at a drug-fueled party before his death didn't make it to air on Entertainment Tonight, nor appear elsewhere. New York coroners ruled that Ledger's recent death was due to an accidental overdose of prescription medication, with few media outlets even casting other aspersions. And when Owen Wilson was hospitalized last year after an apparent suicide attempt, not only did his plight inspire only one cover story in US Weekly, but news coverage was almost entirely sympathetic and respectful, often citing psychiatrists' explanations of the intricacies of mental illness and depression.

Sure, plenty of male stars get excoriated by the media -- Mel Gibson to name one. But overwhelmingly, as a recent New York Times article alleges, "Men who fall from grace are treated with gravity and distance, while women in similar circumstances are objects of derision, titillation and black comedy."

Britney's tears and cautionary tales

Last week a conference called Going Cheap? Female celebrity in the tabloid, reality and scandal genres, held at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., attempted to get to the bottom of this paradox and "our" fascination with self-destructive female celebrites. Papers included Britney's tears: The abject female celebrity in post-emotional society and Hooker, victim and/or doormat: Lindsay Lohan and the culture of celebrity notoriety, among others.

Unsurprisingly, some celebrity journalists disagreed with the symposium's premise, including Gordon Smart, who edits The Sun. He told the BBC that the preponderance of female stars is purely coincidence. "At the moment there just happens to be cluster of female celebrities that are going through difficult times."

But Diane Negra, a professor of film and television studies at the host university, said the coverage of women is definitely more judgmental than the coverage of men. And that while a media story about a drug-addicted man is likely to focus on or even celebrate his expected return (as with Robert Downey Jr.'s recent Iron Man performance) coverage of female celebs is more likely to focus on their (self-inflicted) demise and act as "cautionary tales."

"We seem to have a lot more fixed ideas about what women's lives should be like than we do of men," she said.

Women dare not have it all

Why? "When we use female celebrities this way, we see them failing and struggling, they serve as proof that for women the work-life balance is impossible. Can you have it all? The answer these stories give again and again is 'absolutely not.'"

In the recent New York Times piece, several tabloid editors agreed they handle female celebrities differently but said the reason is due to readership, not sexism. US Weekly's readership is 70 per cent female, and People's is over 90 per cent.

Janice Min, the editor-in-chief of US Weekly, said that putting a solo man on the cover is "cover death. Women don't want to read about men unless it's through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup."

See more stories tagged with: celebrity, brittany spears, amy winehouse

Tyee contributing editor Vanessa Richmond writes the Schlock and Awe column about popular culture and the media.

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