25 minute read

Tabloid Culture

Next Article
That

That

The word ‘tabloid’ was not invented until late 1880s in England when a pharmaceutical company trademarked the term to describe a pill containing compressed powders. Shortly after, publications were condensing English papers, presenting compacted articles of popular topics, starting the tabloid newspapers.

19th Century

Advertisement

It wasn’t until the improvement in the publishing world and the printing press that publications containing general societal gossip started to appear more. Gossip has been part of American Journalism from the colonial years, but because it is associated with women, its importance in history has been diminished. Before tabloids were invented, society magazines were the go-to place to keep up with royals, socialites, and other famous people. These magazines can be traced back to the 18th century, but it was with the creation of illustrated publications in the 19th century that they were able to acquire gossip about the community and their drama.

One of the first women’s page began in the Milwalkee Journal in November 25, 1882, with recipes and wedding notices, women’s role as a wife and mother, but also highlighting their roles as consumers.

Another name can be considered the first American tabloid: Town Topics. The publication ran from 1885 until 1937, and focused on financial advice, short stories, theater reviews and its key selling point, society news. In this column, which due to its popularity took the first half of its publication, is where the gossip and scandals were published.

By using the pseudonym “Sauterings,” its editor E.D. Mann would report on celebrities and members of New York’s high society, creating a community of gossip and an early form of blind items shared on paper (see page 22) since its readers would also contribute with their own insights. This was also the publication that implemented a type of gossip that was specifically created for commercial context, meaning they chose the news that would start conversations and scandals.

1960 - 1990s

Beginning in 1960s, tabloid magazines such as National Enquirer and The Globe began to sell their magazines in supermarkets. By doing so, they targeted a specific audience: housewives and young women. With the typical bold headlines and sensationalist leads, these magazines were able to hold grocery store goers while they waited in line, attempting to sell their products at that last stretch of their shopping.

1920 - 1940s

The tabloid publications that we know today started as “fan magazines.” They were magazines created by people that were interested in keeping up with their favorite celebrities of the time, but mainly to have a place for conversations about the films and theater shows that were popular.

The publication that is often referred to as the first American tabloid is the Broadway Brevities and Society Gossip. Launched in 1916 by Stephen G. Clown, the magazine focused on theater and entertainment gossip that was aimed for the newly rich entrepreneurs and new Manhattaners. Articles included paragraph-length gossip, a small list of questions and/or innuendos that hinted at scandals, (blind items) and stories devoted to the destruction of reputation. Broadway Brevities is also known for hinting same-sex relationships, especially after 1924 with their new column called “A Night in Fairyland,” where these celebrities would be outed for enjoying a night out. It had its last official issue in 1925 after Clown was arrested for his ethics in the publication.

1950s

It wasn’t until the 1950s that magazines had more power and less fear when it came to publishing gossip about celebrities. At this point Hollywood studios had lost some power, making those publications more willing to report on scandals. Confidential magazine was powerful, and Hollywood stars were scared of them. Their first major gossip was published in 1953 about Howard Hughes, the owner of RKO studio. The article described him as “the World’s Richest Bachelor” who was so awkward that “he hires ‘yes-men’ to find ‘yes girls’ for sexual encounters.” This rumor was later confirmed; Hughes would hire these girls for sexual favors, and most of these beauties were under contract to RKO. Even though it was not as scandalous as other stories shared by the publication, having his name on their pages made Hughers’ staff run to newsstands and purchase every copy they could find. Confidential editors were fearless, and quickly deconstructed the Hollywood image that was carefully crafted by producers back in the 1920s with the help of fan magazines. It became the most sold magazine in the United States, but by 1957, there were so many artists suing them that they went on trial and disappeared afterwards.

At the same time, these tabloids would offer to buy back their unsold issues so newer, up to date ones could be displayed. The “supermarket tabloid” era was when magazines started to have colored pages, and by the late 1980s, every issue were completely colored. This was also the time when celebrities started suing tabloid magazines for little.

The most famous exemple is of actress Carol Burnett’s successful lawsuit against The National Enquirer in 1976. The magazine implied she was drunk in a public encounter with U.S. secretary Henry Kissinger. As a result, it impacted tabloids’ recklessness and increased the willingness of celebrities to sue for label in the U.S.

2000s

The success of supermarket tabloids continued throughout the 2000s, and paparazzis took advantage of that to follow celebrities around by stalk them into their private lives, aiming for a click of an intimate moment.

The invention of the Internet and the ease of sharing content assisted in the development of blogs and websites specific for celebrity gossips: Perez Hilton, TMZ, Lainey Gossip, and many other blogs made their furtune by harassing celebrities and posting gossip at a record speed.

The fast and free content on the web gathered an audience that wanted to be up to date without the need of getting out of the comfort of their own home.

As the demand for information grew, these bloggers and paparazzis saw the need to acquire breaking news before their competitors, creating a media war within powerful outlets. With that also came fake news and twisted headlines that started to affect celebrities’ lives more than ever.

The mysogyny and homophobia of the early 2000s also assisted in the double standars when it came to the tratment of certain celebrities. Mental health made headlines, sex tapes were a fair game, and “bad behaviors” were what tabloids were looking for to be the on their covers.

The 2010s was the social media decade. Celebrity culture was domesticated by a free photo-sharing app — Instagram — and consequently leaving paparazzis out of relevance. As celebrities signed up, we gained access to their personal lives, a consented entry to their homes, giving us a new way of seeing our favorite stars. We got intimate with them, and they shared what they wanted (or what their publicists wanted us to know) and allowed us to enjoyed this personal connection that Instagram allowed us to have.

There was Twitter, giving us the possibility of communicating with celebrities through short messages. One like, retweet, or even a response from them gave us the false feeling of befriending someone that would otherwise not connect with us.

But this also created a new era for tabloid culture: we became the tabloids. We were the ones sharing their content, commenting on them, agreeing or disagreeing with their opinion, and giving them attention.

As social media evolved and became a direct source for celebrity gossip, previous medium like magazines and blogs also moved to those platforms to continue sharing their content. Blind item blogs evolved and Tiktok became a popular app for that type of content, Deuxmoi went from a social experiment to a popular gossiping account, and Perez Hilton is now just sharing screenshots of his blog posts.

○ Born: Aug, 1881, Freeport, IL.

○ always wanted to be a writer.

○ First job as a writer: the Society Doings in Dixon, IL.

○ Moved to Chicago in 1910.

○ Single mother of a girl, Harriet Parsons.

○ Worked at Essahay Studios as a screenwriter.

○ Got her own gossip column at the Chicago Herald 1915 - 1918.

○ Moved to New York City in 1918, and got a column at the Morning telegraph.

○ 1923 - hired by Hearst to write for the New York American.

○ Fought for a raise: from $120/week to $210/week.

○ Moved to Los Angeles in 1926.

○ Got her own radio show called “Hollywood Hotel” in 1931.

○ Changed affiliation from MGM to Warner Brothers in 1937.

○ Controlled Hollywood.

The year 1939 has a significant importance in history: The Second World War started in September after Nazy Germany invaded Poland, and European countries entered the war against Hitler’s ideologies. The United States, which was still neutral in the war, was experiencing the Golden Age of Hollywood. Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were both premiering that year, and there were two of the most prominent celebrity columnists of the century starting a rivalry: Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. The two small-town girls who achieved success in movie and celebrity gossip by creating connections with stars and studios in the 1920s and 1930s were now seen as competitors by readers, studios, and the media.

But let’s get back in time. By 1900, there were only 200 female writers in the United States. Coming from a new women’s movement, they wanted a career like their fathers and husbands, where they could get paid to do what they loved. Gossiping played an important role in women’s lives, especially in small towns, where Hopper and Parsons started their careers, as it was a way for women to build emotional and social bonds with one another and gain some power and status within their communities. These two talented women, however, ended up working for powerful men, who mainly thought of ways to attract readership. This way, columns were manipulated, and with that, Hollywood studios were able to control the narrative. Hopper and Parson knew of their worth, and soon disassociated themselves from powerful studios and started writing on their own without losing their audiences, and that is when their so-called rivalry was intensified by the media.

Louella Parsons

Louella Parsons was born in August of 1881 in Freeport, Illinois. She had always been ambitious, challenging the stereotypes that surrounded her gender from a young age. She wanted to grow up as fast as possible and was optimistic that she’d become one of the best writers in the country.

She started her career in 1902 as a part-time drama editor for a small newspaper in Dixon, IL, while she attended college to become an elementary school teacher. She wrote for a society page called Society Doings, with a $5 a week paycheck and without a byline. She moved to Chicago in 1910, where she would enter the motion picture industry. By this time she had married John Parsons, who left her for another woman, abandoning her as a single mother of one.

Once in the big city, she started working as a script editor for Essanay Studios, an early motion pictures studio known for its comedies, especially The Tramp starring Charlie Chaplin (1915). She helped select scripts that would eventually be turned into silent films, and as years went by she was promoted to writing her own scripts.

Essanay Studios is located in Andersonville, on the north side of Chicago, and even though it only ran from 1908 to 1915, part of the structure is still erected and was declared a Chicago Landmark in 1996. Besides Chaplin, Essanay starred Gloria Swanson — a three-time Academy Award nominee and a Golden Globe winner for her role in Sunset Boulevard — and cinema’s first cowboy hero, G. M. “Bronco Billy” Anderson. By the time Hollywood became the center of motion pictures, the company collapsed in 1917, leaving many local workers without a job, including Parsons, who had worked there for five years. The studio has been occupied by St. Augustine College, with the production space serving as Essanay Centers, and its auditorium is named after Charlie Chaplin.

Parsons found a new career path at the Chicago Herald shortly after being let off. Due to her experience in the motion pictures, she was acquainted with several stars, assisting her with the scoops of the industry. Her column Scene on the Screen would reveal the behindthe-scenes and reviews of new films, becoming one of the first movie gossip columnists in the country.

One powerful man, however, bought the Chicago Herald in 1918. William Randolph Hearst was an influential publisher of the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Journal, and by 1902 he had entered Chicago by establishing the Chicago American. Hearst came from a well-off family, having acquired the best education his parents could pay for and had been ambitious since young. He entered the publishing world by taking over The Examiner at age 23, a newspaper his father had acquired as a payment for a gambling debt. His main competitor was Joseph Pulitzer, who was also changing journalism in the early 1900s.

Hearst was a man who thought about returns and readerships: he wanted to write about what people wanted to read and acquire sponsorships and revenue. To do so, he needed writers and journalists that would lie if needed and would avoid controversial pieces at all costs. When the Herald was bought, Parsons was immediately dismissed with the belief that movie columns were not in demand, when in reality, they did not want someone that would write controversial pieces. As she was being dismissed, she gathered her family and decided to move to New York City to start another chapter of her life

The movie industry had not taken off in the East Coast, and the motion picture scene was still relatively new in New York City. Parsons’s first job was with Morning Telegraph, which was investing in a new column, but since she was new in the city, she needed to network with the local stars to receive tips for her column. By 1923, however, she had made new friends, one being Marion Davies, who was coincidently William Hearst’s mistress. Knowing who she was and needing his affair to be kept under the radar, Hearst hired Parsons, giving her a contract to write a daily movie gossip column in the New York American. He was still married to actress Millicent Willson, who he separated in 1926 and only lawfully divorced in 1951. Parsons, believing in her talent, negotiated her paycheck with the powerful man: She was offered $120 a week, and after months of conversations, Hearst

“The Gossipist”

○ Born Elda Furry in June, 1890, Hollidaysburg, PA.

○ A single mother of a boy, William Hopper (after his father).

○ Changed her name to “Hedda” after her husband miscalled her by any of his four ex-wives, who all had similar names.

○ Started acting on silent films in 1915.

○ Moved to Hollywood in 1923.

○ Struggled as an actress, but made quick appearances in movies.

Known for wearing cool hats.

○ Made a lot of friends for being a natural gossiper.

○ 1938 - Hired as a gossip columnist at the Los Angeles Times to be Louella Parsons’ “rival.” gave into her rate of $250 a week. Parsons was now getting paid well and rising in the industry.

○ Created a special relationship with her readers.

Daily readership by mid- 1950s was about 32 million.

○ Controlled Hollywood.

By the mid-1920s, however, Parsons was projecting a fantasy version of the dream factory that was the motion picture industry. In her eyes — or what she wanted the audience to believe — was that every celebrity had a heart of gold, and no one had ever done anything wrong.

Her competence influenced her move to Hollywood, where she would continue to work for Hearst and protect him — and his mistress — from being discovered by the readers. Her column became where stars would want to be at, and she was so powerful that she could easily manipulate celebrities to kiss up to her. Parsons got her own radio show on CBS in 1931 called Hollywood Hotel, where she would interview celebrities without paying them. By this time, she could ruin one’s career if one went against the columnist.

At this point Louella Parsons controlled Hollywood. She barely had any competition until another woman showed up in the newspaper industry: Hedda Hoppers, an actress-turned- columnist who became Parsons’ direct rival.

Hedda Hoppers

Hedda Hopper was born

Elda Furry in June of 1885 in Hollidaysburg, PA in a Quaker farm community. One of nine children, Furry always had to fight for recognition of her talent and independence among her brothers. In 1888, her father sold the farm and moved to Altoona, opening a butcher shop, putting Furry to work with him at a young age. Because of her gender, he did not pay her a salary, leading the young lady to steal what she believed she was worth. She would save the money from the butcher shop so she could one day run away from home, which happened in 1898 when she finally moved to Pittsburgh.

At age twenty-two, Furry moved to New York City, where she decided to change her birth month from June to May, and her birth year from 1885 to 1890, making her seventeen years old on paper. She joined DeWolf Hopper’s theater company, who she eventually fell in love with and married in 1913 at the age of twenty-eight (or twenty-three in paper). He was fifty-five at the time (five years older than Furry’s father), had a bald head as a result of child tuberculosis, but wore amazing wigs to compensate for his hair loss. DeWolf also had a blue-tinted skin from gargling silver nitrate for a vocal condition, which gave him a great voice, one thing Furry enjoyed. His four previous wives’ names were: Ella, Ida, Edna, and Ella, making “Elda ‘’ too confusing for the man. Furry paid $10 for a numerologist to choose her a new name, and that is how “Hedda Hopper” was born in 1918.

She lived in New York with her husband until their divorce in 1922 caused by his infidelities and demands. After their son was born in 1915, Hedda decided to turn a blind eye to her husband’s flirtations with other women and started to build her career as an actress. He had asked her to give it up to take care of their child when in reality he was jealous of Hopper’s success in acting and silent films. For example, she got paid $1000 a week to appear in a film, which appalled DeWolf since that was more than his paychecks. As their divorce concluded, she moved to Hollywood to continue her career.

Hopper started her acting career in silent movies in 1915, with her motion picture debut The Battle of Hearts (1916). Even though she was never the star of the films she worked on, Hoppers would use her paycheck to beautify her wardrobe so that she would stand out in her roles. It was never unnoticed, since Louella Parsons noticed the efforts and nicknamed the actress the “queen of the quickies” due to her brief appearances in scenes.

When Hollywood shifted from silent films to voiced ones, Hopper was one of the few actors that survived the change. She had a voice that was usually connected to society women, but by the age 45, she was receiving fewer roles, as the studios were hiring younger actresses for her roles.

Being in the industry meant that Hoppers knew everyone and everything, but her acting career did not last long. MGM ended her contract in 1932, leaving her unemployed and needing to figure out a new occupation. The change in her career did not change her routine, as she would still be invited to events and mingle with the Hollywood elites.

Hopper worked as a real estate agent, did some stage work, and even had a job at a cosmetic firm before starting the career that was going to put her in the spotlight.

Her friend and columnist Eleanor Cissy Patterson offered Hopper a position to write about fashion in Hollywood at Hearts’ Washington Herald, but in 1937, Hopper received a better offer: the Esquire Syndicate wanted to start a gossip column, and contacted MGM press agent Andy Hervey for a recommendation. Hervey, who knew Hopper was a natural gossiper, suggested her for the job, and on February 14, 1938 the Los Angeles Times started carrying her column in their papers. Her first article was about how her son had changed her life for the better. There were grammatical errors that affected her reputation as a writer, so instead of improving it, she created her own style: “outspoken bitchiness” and as a result, it attracted more readers to her column. She was fifty-five years old when her real career began.

But the article that put her in the spotlight as a competition for Parsons’ column was Hopper’s exclusive interview with James Roosevelt, the eldest son of Franklin Roosevelt, where she confronted him about his marriage in 1940. His refusal to comment on whether he was getting a divorce or not was the answer Hopper was looking for and exposed his public life: a detailed piece on his separation from his wife and his appearances with another woman. The cover news was picked up nationally by various newspapers, putting Hopper’s name in the known as someone who collapsed boundaries between the public and the private, the political and the personal.

Politics had always been a point of interest in Hopper’s life, and even though she was advised to not mix gossip with politics, the conservative

From woman fought to expose communist members of Hollywood, going as far as blacklisting them due to the power she held in the film industry.

Start of the rivalry

Movie columns were the way studios found to have control over their films, image, and actors. They controlled Hopper and Parsons to write what was requested by these studios and the gossip shared by their connection with Hollywood stars. By 1937, Parsons started losing touch with her columns and being disliked by the industry. After changing affiliation from MGM to Warner Brothers, the executives from the studios began to look for someone that could reach a similar level of importance in movie gossip and compete with Parsons. Hoppers entered the scene as a competitor, and no one expected her quick rise to success.

Parsons’ “downfall” started in 1937, when her good friend and actress Carole Lambard told the columnist how she was not planning on marrying her boyfriend Clark Gable anytime soon, but that if they changed their minds, the writer would be the first to know. Even though Parsons did not believe her words, due to the lack of gossip and being close to a deadline before leaving town for the weekend, she put the confession she had just heard on her column. The couple eloped that same weekend, and gave the scoop to every paper in the Los Angeles area, including Hoppers, while Parsons missed the event.

The Hollywood gossip column was the proximity to movie stars that people wanted, and Hoppers being a star helped solidify her column in the Los Angeles Times. Her tone was more conversational compared to Parsons, but what attracted readership in the late 1930s and early 1940s was that the publication was becoming very political, making gossip lie in the same importance as world news. Many in the industry believed that Hopper’s cruel gossip was due to jealousy since she had failed as an actress, but she was simply trying her best at her job.

Parsons and Hopper’s feud was created by the media, but they also disliked each other in real life. They refused to attend events together, and if they were in the same location, they demanded to be seated as far away from each other as possible. They were rude to each other but made sure to have nice words about the other’s kids.

Similar to Parsons, Hopper understood her power in the industry, and if a celebrity refused to be interviewed by the columnist, she would insult or ignore them in the papers. Actress Merle Oberon asked Hopper why she wrote cruel things in her column, to which she responded: “bitchery, dear. Sheer bitchery.” As the competitiveness continued, Hopper would also hurt and humiliate those that would choose Parsons instead of her.

In 1947, TIME magazine’s July issue had Hopper on the cover, titling her “The Gossiper.” They mentioned her feud with Parsons, but recognized her battle for acceptance in the movie industry, as well as her career as a writer. They described her as “a self-appointed judge and censor of all that goes into Hollywood,” as well as acknowledging her as a “fighter from the start,” explaining her early battle to run away from her farm in Pennsylvania.

The decentralization of studios shifted the rules behind columnists’ approach to direct gossip, but Hopper was able to transition to television as it had become more accessible for Americans to purchase one. Her TV special Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood in 1960 attracted an unexpected audience, validating her popularity after years of newspaper work and building a relationship with her audience.

However, three years after the show, her career went downhill: She released her second book, The Whole Truth and Nothing But dedicated to her son Bill. It was an instant success until a lawsuit was filed against her allusion to a homosexual relationship between actors Michael Wilding and Stuard Grager. For the first time in her career, her words had a consequence, and Wilding won the case against Hopper.

In 1965, Parsons retired due to medical problems, and she was placed in a retirement home at the age of 84. Two months after her announcement, Hopper passed away after complications from double pneumonia in February of 1966. Parsons’ daughter Harriet delivered the news to her mother, who simply responded with “good” after a long pause. Parsons lived six more years before passing away of arteriosclerosis at 91 on December 9, 1972.

These two columnists left the legacy of creating an industry of gossiping in Hollywood, challenging powerful men of the studios and achieving success after working hard. They created — and destroyed — careers, fueling fear that maintained their force in the gossiping industry. The tabloid world has changed a lot since but similar manners have stayed present: the public’s interest in the private, rumors becoming news, and the invasion of privacy continue to disturb celebrities’ lives, but over sixty years after Hopper and Parsons’ reign in Hollywood, we have social media controlling what these people say or do. Are we the new Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons? Only time will tell.

The Keyword of the 2000s Consent

The Keyword of the 2000s

Teen celebrities have come out and mentioned how difficult growing up in front (and behind) the cameras are, especially for the girls. Sexualization comes from every area of the industry, and no adult was taken for granted for the words they have utilized to deascribe these young actors. This piece is an examination of early 2000s Rolling Stone interviews where pop stars of the time were sexualized and objectified at a young age.

In August 2004, Rolling Stone released their Lindsay Lohan cover during one of the best years of her career. She was coming out of the success of Freaky Friday and was the protagonist of two movies: Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Beautiful and talented, girls looked up to her; so did grown men, though a little too much for someone her age. Donald Trump even stated in an interview with Howard Stern that same year about how “deeply troubled women” are always “the best in bed,” referring to Lohan herself.

The interview starts with an important statement: Lohan felt the need to confirm that “her breasts are real.” She had been “eighteen for just under a week,” as the reporter Mark Binelli states, followed by how a gentleman never asks such questions, though for his reporting — which he described as “discreet visual fact checking, a goodbye hug” — he confirms her statement about her body parts. Her breasts had been a topic of discussion long enough that the actress felt forced to state the “obvious” before it was asked.

The cover photo of the magazine is arguably “sexy,” even though she wears a black top, with her hands behind her back while her long, red hair goes wild. She is smiling, while doing that tongue thing where you roll it back — something that can be considered wild and sexy. The cover line says “Hot, Ready, and Legal!” The last one being a keyword utilized by many reporters to describe celebrities — usually female — that had just completed their eighteenth year on Earth. It is legal now for them to be sexualized by older men, to be seen as an adult; it is legal to talk about their bodies and make sex jokes about them.

Lohan’s interview is just one example of what sold back then. Just a year before that, Stone had two big teen celebrities on the cover of their magazine. Seventeen-year-olds Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were the stars of the September 2003 edition. However, during the interview, the reporter describes how the twins were sexualized by “college-age guys” that walked by them at a diner, where the interview was being held, and noticed how hot they were. One of the boys suggested to his friend that “[he’d] take the one on the left, [and his friend] take the other.” A few paragraphs down, reporter Jancee Dunn — a female this time around — mentions how “bars and websites feature a countdown to the twins’ eighteenth birthday,” and Howard Stern mentions them on the air regularly by stating how men can “avoid persky jail time and legal fees” for sexualizing the teen girls once they are finally legal.

The age of consent varies throughout States, and while in California — where most celebrities resided during the 2000s — it is eighteen, the age can go as low as sixteen in other states, creating the stigma that those people are allowed to spectate teenagers differently. Men had the audacity to objectify those innocent girls because they could, and for the sake of their careers, these same girls had to smile and nod. If you sit down and read interviews from that time, they are usually written by male reporters about female celebrities, focusing not only on their careers but also their personal lives and bodies.

In the Olsen twins’ case, the reporter was female. While the description of the girls was not sexual in any way, Dunn made sure to comment on their looks particularly about how short and skinny they were; she reminded readers that the ideal body is a size zero, which the twins were, and how they were therefore attractive. However, the interview points out the harassment which being in the spotlight causes. They were asked about their virginity when they were sixteen, and explain how they were affected when bikini photos of them were taken and shared by paparazzis from their vacation.

Britney Spears is another celebrity who was sexualized from an early age; the combination of innocence with a sex appeal caused many to look forward to her eighteenth birthday in 1999. Her first Rolling Stone that year, when she was still seventeen years old. The cover has the seventeen year-old singer lying on a pink silk cover, holding a phone to her ear with her left hand while holding Tinky Winky — the purple Teletubby — close to her with her right arm. She wears a black bikini top and a black polka-dot silky shorts, looking directly at the camera — us — as if trying to innocently seduce the reader. The cover line tells us that we are gonna get “inside her head, mind, and bedroom of a Teen Dream.” The bedroom mention comes from again the interviewer entering her room and examining where the girl grew up, but the photoshoot utilizing her doll collection in the background contrasts her innocent past with her sexualized career, making it clear that the combination of both looks attracts people.

It took Steven Daly, the reporter, four paragraphs to mention her career and her best-selling album … Baby One More Time. He started by describing her appearance during the interview by checking her “honeyed thigh across the length of the sofa” out and describing her “BABY PHAT logo of [her] pink T-shirt” that was “distended by her ample chest” as well as noticing her “silky white shorts that clings to her hips.” In the second paragraph, the reporter admits that the trap is “carefully baited” by her debut video — the one where she’s dancing “like the naughtiest schoolgirls,” meaning that because Spears’ music video was meant to be sexy, men were allowed to sexualize her. He contradicted himself in less than a sentence. This interview does not mention how close she is to the “legal age,” yet it is heavily implied by how the reporter describes her in the beginning. He tries to diminish his wronging with Spears’ words where she clarifies that she dresses up as any seventeen year old of 1999, and that she makes music for people of her age as well as older generations. In 2003, Spears came out to GQ by saying that she felt tricked into doing the highly sexualized cover at the age of 16.“[I] didn’t really know what the hell I was doing…I was back in my bedroom, and I had my little sweater on and he was like, ‘Undo your sweater a little bit more.’ The whole thing was about me being into dolls, and in my naïve mind I was like, ‘Here are my dolls!’ and now I look back

- Britney Spears for GQ about her 1999 Rolling Stones cover at the age of 17 and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, what the hell?’”

Just like Daly, many other reporters got away with sexualizing teens by utilizing the magic word that made everything they say legal, because once you are eighteen, they have the green light to say what they want any way they’d like.

Consent in the early 2000s meant that grown adults, especially male, had the right to sexualize teen girls. Once they were eighteen, people could “start” to notice their breasts, their hips and make jokes regarding their sexual lives. Being legal meant that your image would sell if you had little to no clothes on the cover of magazines.

Stone’s demographic today is 60% male, in which 26% (the majority in this case) ages ranging between 25-34. It is possible that the male percentage was even higher in the early 2000s due to the sexualization of female celebrities by the magazine. Unlike today when online articles and magazines are preferred, in the early 2000s the readers would buy the physical magazines, creating the need for appealing covers and stories that interested these audiences. Celebrities would agree to these needs for their own good — their careers would continue to fly if they were in people’s minds, for better or worse.

Britney Spears’ branding was the innocent girl gone wild, while Lindsey Lohan, Mary-Kate and Ashley were celebrities people watched grow up on their screens, and now it was time to see if these child stars would go bad after becoming legal adults.

The age of consent blurred the lines between the legal age of the teens and the legal age men were allowed to confess their obsession for young girls without looking like pedophiles. Being sexualized as a woman was already habitual, yet claiming that these celebrities were “just shy of being legal” was an innuendo to admitting that they check out young girls. These girls were traumatized by the industry, which harassed

This article is from: