Aug 13 2008
News: people hate girls
Just incase there is any residual doubt amongst my readers that generally women are not considered praiseworthy, or enabled to take-on prasieworthy roles beyond those condoned by patriarchal values, the BBC reported an analysis that confirms that celebrity females are more likely to be HATED and less likely to be LOVED than celebrity males:
In a nutshell, despite years of equal opportunities, the media - and the people who watch and read - prefer the stay-at-home mother over a woman who lives her life in public, particularly one who is overtly ambitious or successful in making money. There is great satisfaction among many people in seeing them humbled
I do hope no one is terribly suprised or shocked by this result.
News: people hate girls
Maybe because many of those women are famous for the wrong reasons. Oh look I can afford stuff you can’t. I haven’t even heard most of the female British celebs listed but it’s undeniable that Beckham has a lot more talent in his profession than his wife. And how can she even be in the same musical page as the Beatles is beyond me. In the US there is no male that can even come close to the love for Oprah.
Recap: In the article, the four women listed amongst the five most hated celebrities were Heather Mills,
Amy Winehouse, Victoria Beckham and Kerry Katona.
The article goes on to say, “Heather Mills is probably the easiest dealt with. Many people’s main gripe
with celebrity is that it offers those without talents a chance to find material wealth through
manipulation. For the tabloid media at least, Mills fits the bill. But it’s a bit harder to fathom the
rest of the list. Why are these women seen to be so loathsome?”
Surely the same reasoning applies to Beckham and Katona, arguably even more so than Mills. They are
people who have sought fame and fortune for its own sake and by any means necessary, rather than
achieving them as a result of talent and merit. Female contestants on Big Brother openly and proudly
proclaim that they aspire to be a WAG (WAG = Wives And Girlfriends), ie their ambition extends to
attaching themselves to someone who is already rich and famous. Katona and Beckham are famous for being
famous and not for being any good at anything. That is why they are hated.
And who hates them? I pay little attention to them. You cannot achieve celebrity if nobody pays
attention to you. The best way to promote this insipid culture of celebrity is to create demand for the
product, eg buying the celebrity tittle-tattle magazines, such as Heat, Reveal, Hello! etc, that fuel the
industry.
ignoring talentless individuals irrespective of gender is the best policy. The point in the article is not about talent, its about attitudes of people to celebrities showing a clear gender divide.
Lets assume there are many talentless celebrity males, and if not, why are women targetted by the press for talentless celebrity over males? Wiuthout press coverage you cannot be a celebrity. There are plenty of talented women around to be celebrities why don’t the press cover them, oh, I forgot, they do if they are over 60 and still look sexy in a bikini….. highlighting their ‘talent’.
Assuming there are plenty of talentless male celebrities, often they call themselves DJ’s for some reason I can’t fathom. It is odd that only Simon Cowell represented males in this most-hated celebrities list. To me it looks like the press actually prefers to contribute to the celebrityification-without-talent of people if they are girls more than males, it is a gender-based differentiation. Both press and public prefer to hate women celebrities over men.
Char, you are absolutely right. I cannot explain the gender divide and why the ‘most hated’ list consists mostly of talentless women and why the ‘most loved’ list consists mostly of talented men other than to concur with your view that there is a gender bias in the media.
For some reason, talentless female celebrities attract more attention than the males. If it was contained in the trashy mags then they might get away with it, but the all-pervading ubiquity they seek, and largely get, inevitably leads to a swelling of hostility towards them.
There are plenty of unlikeable, annoying and talentless male celebrities but they just don’t seem to reach the same giddy heights of exposure as the likes of Beckham, Katona, Goody etc and, therefore, do not spring so quickly to mind when asked “Whom do you hate?”
Every year, Big Brother and The X Factor serve up another dollop of fatuous wannabies, both male and female, so where are the males in the ‘most hated’ list?
On the other side of the puzzle, where are the talented and respected likes of Judi Dench, Kate Bush, Becky Adlington, JK Rowling and Madonna in the ‘most loved’ list?