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Now that I’m thinking about it, what are your guys’ must read “oh my god people wrote this?!” instructively cruel celeb profiles of the 2000s? I’d love to compile a list of TEACHABLE MOMENTS. To start: Lindsay Lohan as Rolling Stone IT GIRL 2004 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/lindsay-lohan-confessions-of-a-teenage-drama-queen-227834/
She was 18 ok yeah all right so it’s fine to start a piece like this then?
Jessica Simpson’s “Housewife of the Year” cover story https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/jessica-simpson-portrait-of-a-living-doll-241202/
“The Self Manufacture of Megan Fox” was tricky, because it’s a prestigious, serious paper and the article acknowledges Fox’s participation in the artifice, but it also goes out of its way to drag her in ways similar to any other outlet in the aughts https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15Fox-t.html
This is post-2000s, but early in her rise Margot Robbie really seemed to have the effect of prompting men to show their whole asses and write about her like it was 2005 all over again. We all remember this https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/07/margot-robbie-cover-story
I don’t cite these things as an exercise in hate reading. I really don’t. We have come a long way, but the terribly problematic 2000s were actually super recent, and there are still so many specific ways we need to reckon with how VICIOUS that era was
I’m not going to belabor the Promising Young Woman/Variety thing. But that critic has talked since then about being dragged out for his reductive framing of Mulligan’s physical performance in the film, and his reaction only tells me we need to elucidate further where the harm is
To say her reaction was “quite a leap” from what his words intended just isn’t true. It’s not QUITE A LEAP for an actress to infer gross objectification from media, because outside the industry but ESPECIALLY within, women are conditioned to expect being grossly objectified
The profiles in this thread are from an earlier era where misogynist commentary was celebrated as pithy and entertaining, and our stars in their 30s now GREW UP in the cutthroat media machine of the 2000s. And honestly to just protect themselves they can’t grant charitable reads
When people, yes men in particular, present critique that reads as a referendum on how fuckable you seem — especially when you’re being directly compared to another actress. That anyone would consider a woman feeling reduced to her parts A LEAP in logic means
To me at least that we still have a lot more SPECIFIC reconciling to do with the kind of media commentary that used to be celebrated vs what is acceptable in the presented. We have learned more about what is harmful vs what is valid, rigorous analysis, but that doesn’t mean
the conditioning through YEARS of misogyny and objectification has just been LIFTED of the shoulders of the public figures (which is to say nothing of the private individuals) on the receiving end of poison pens for years or DECADES of their lives.
As @bjcolangelo points out... remember the Olsen Twins “countdown till their legal” clocks? This was *normal*
Another regressive 2010s Margot piece, the Elle cover story that actually framed the interview... as a date?? https://www.elle.com/fashion/a29287/margot-robbie-august-2015-elle/
Don’t consider these articles isolation to one problem, either. Evan Rachel Wood has been doing a whole discovery process on her IG stories laying out in detail the media complicity with Marilyn Manson’s openly abusive lifestyle. Establishment journalists and outlets
helped launder his “rockstar” behavior for decades while rarely AT ALL interrogating FREQUENT inferences or outright declarations of abusive behavior. If you set a standard that it’s ok to base a profile of a teen girl around her boobs, and that it’s ok for someone like Manson
To talk about violent fantasies of domestic abuse and frame him simply as an eccentric, you are creating a world in which women are pieces of bodies for hurting and fucking and men can treat those pieces however you want. ALL of this works together.
Since I’m still marinating on this, I think an interesting 10s extension of the convo is what a BACKLASH it became to the 2000s in terms of celeb reticence to make themselves available when they can fully self curate via social. We have more of famous people than ever
But less willingness from those people to opt into self examination from THOUGHTFUL writers, but with everything that came before as an example of how quickly that exposure careens into savagery, can you blame people for a massive over reaction? I kinda can’t!
In the middle of Taylor Swift’s career she started getting maligned for her over eagerness and a kind of sincerity that was dragged as cynical performance. But for real, if you’re 15 in 2004 and seeing how the machine packages and annihilates your peers and you have to make
a choice about HOW you want the wider world to process you, do you really risk presenting yourself in any way that puts you on the wrong side of the angel/whore binary? Do you let them call you an ungrateful little girl? Do you let them sacrifice you like you’ve watched them do
To so many women around you in your exact demographic? Such a tightly managed persona becomes an act of self defense and then you get raked for being duplicitous, disingenuous, or TOO cunning. But when you’re on the precipice of massive exposure then eventually IN IT, as a woman
You not only have to decide who you’re going to be for the press, you have to prepare for the kind of villain they will eventually make you. And decide where the greatest cost benefit lies in that calculus. ALL 
those profiles prove why that calculus is necessary.
those profiles prove why that calculus is necessary.
And all THAT applies to a figure with the privilege and protections of being thin, pretty, rich, and white. If you’re outside those hallowed parameters, you’re not starting from home base you’re starting from the fucking parking lot outside.
Which is all to say, MY GOD, we need to pay more attention to the bad old days if we have any hope of being better going forward.
