On Frenemies in the Media.

As any reader of The Feminine Mystique knows, women's media - or is 'media directed at women' more accurate? - has been revolutionised since times where instructive articles insisted that if female readers wanted to keep a man, they must first learn to keep house, keep glamorous and keep quiet. Young women of 2010, brought up on More! and Sex and the City, look back to this period in smug surprise at the apparent indifference that our 1950s equivalents apparently had in the face of such brazen misogyny and injustice: 'Why would women pay to read such poison?', we marvel, our copy of Company or Glamour in hand. 'Those articles were clearly written with male interests in mind.'

It would take a huge pseudo-intellectual stretch to deem Cosmopolitan the Spare Rib of our generation, but compared to articles which actively criticised higher education for women on the grounds that it would make them unhappy housewives it is impossible not to feel the relative privilege in our lives as a result of the Women's Liberation Movement. Our magazines embrace our sexuality! They celebrate single women! They encourage us to critique our relationships, and would never tell us we were too fat to find love! Or at least not to our face. Because if anything distinguishes the voices in 'women's media' in 2010, it is their frenemy status. 

What is a frenemy? For those who didn't think Mean Girls was a documentary, a frenemy is exactly what it sounds like: an enemy disguised as a friend. Dispenser of backhanded compliments, the frenemy is only '100% by your side' because she would hate to be elsewhere and miss your downfall. The only difference between the sentiments of an enemy and a frenemy is the tone by which they are expressed: their message is exactly the same. One such frenemy appears to write for Company magazine.

Company's recent article 'Have Sex, Look Skinny' called to mind an embarassing story previously published by a similar magazine in which one woman shared her - admittedly horrifying - experience of being told by her boyfriend during sex that "her belly was a right swinger." Readers were understandably appalled, finding the insult bad enough but its timing - at a most vulnerable moment - a far more distressing episode of humiliation than the usual "my tampon fell out of my bag on a date" anecdote. Personally, my first thought was "wanker". It was not "how can I turn this insecurity into an article helpfully offering the most flattering sexual positions for a fuller figure."

Maybe some readers were craving this kind of guidance, just dying for the opportunity to turn sex into another joyless manifestation of their own neurotic body anxieties. Personally, I felt more than a little sold out. What about the women's mag mantras I had grown so accustomed to? I thought MEN LOVED CURVES, MEN DON'T NOTICE 'FLAWS' DURING SEX, ORGASM CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY BEING IN THE MOMENT, GOOD SEX IS SEX WITHOUT INHIBITIONS? Now I was being told to consider myself in sexual terms as a postcard: what are my best views? When am I most picturesque? Sex becomes a still image and Heat magazine writers stand by poised to draw a red circle round the parts they deem ugly. How, in this day and age, post-The Female Eunuch, post- Carrie Bradshaw and the ladette phenomenon and all that lies between us and our 1950s counterparts, can such blatant pandering to the male gaze over female pleasure be published with its head held high? Simple. Because it was written by a frenemy.

Rather than spell out its message proudly, which undoubtedly is that without constant attention to detail you are repulsive to men, and unless you are a male fantasy come to life you are worthless, our BFF at Company gives us tough love because she cares. You should pose yourself like a mannequin during moments of alleged intimacy because... if you feel attractive, you enjoy sex more! You're gorgeous... when you make an effort! You can borrow my dress... it makes you look so slim! And aren't you pretty... for your age! 

When a light is shone on this backhanded compliment approach, the progress of women's magazines looks considerably less impressive. In fact, much of it is the same reactionary, sexist bullshit expressed in cosy, sisterly, 'we're all in this together' terms. In a world where political correctness reigns supreme, women's magazines may have changed their lingo - misappropriating words like EMPOWERMENT and SELF-ESTEEM when really they mean CONFORMITY - but they haven't yet changed their message. Beware your frenemies in the media: if body confidence is crucial to sexual satisfaction, then why promote increased awareness of appearance during intercourse? If you shouldn't feel embarrassed to earn more than your boyfriend, why is one magazine compelled to provide advice on how to reassure him? Rather than challenging a society which places these pressures on women, magazines aimed at women instead provide an endless barrage of commands designed to make women fit the slot they have been allocated. However it is important to remember that they don't even want you to fit the slot too comfortably, because then you will stop buying magazines...

On 'Snog Marry Avoid?'

Any insomniac blessed with the questionable gifts of Freeview will be au fait with the Irn-Bru bar for the soul that is BBC3's 'Snog Marry Avoid?'


‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ is a self-proclaimed “makeunder” show, subverting the familiar format of transformation television in that its objective is proclaimed to be the celebration and promotion of a rather abstract concept they have entitled ‘natural beauty’. This, admittedly, lies in clear contrast to the usual set-up, where some interfering glamourpuss imposes an education in eyebrow pencils usually designed to force unsuspecting females to admit the futility of their existence and their failure as a woman.

So far, so well intentioned. However, much in the same tone as Cosmopolitan articles which encourage 'loving your curves' – rooted, of course, in the assumption that you already loathe them - before publishing twenty pages of advertisements for discounted liposuction, ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ falls well short of female empowerment.

Jenny Frost – former Atomic Kitten turned Atomic Hypocritten – presents, and her sole reason for getting up in the morning is to persevere in her attack on cosmetic fakery. Quite rightly, she has ordained that thirteen year old girls painting on their skin-tone, supergluing their eyelashes and clipping in their hair before school is an indication of something sinister in our society, and she is on a one-woman quest to liberate modern women from the repressive shackles of mass-produced, unattainable ideals of beauty.

                                         
Or not. Naomi Wolf she certainly isn’t, and Jenny Frost in her bottle-blonde, permatanned glory would certainly seem like a confusing choice of prophet for this particular message. Therefore, rather than expose the mechanisms of the cosmetics industry and its dependence upon feelings of inadequacy in women, the main focus is instead on promoting a new, arguably MORE restrictive ideal of feminine beauty which allows for – nay, demands - the use of cosmetics but only when they are used in the right way.


Do you understand? This is where the “natural beauty” aspect of ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ becomes problematic. It actually promotes an aesthetic ideal just as dependent on the much-vilified fakery as the Jodie Marsh style it intends to destroy. Brought before the dislocated voice of Pod - which is presumably the Wizard of Oz in drag – these girls spend approximately two seconds of being made under, having removed their make up and various extensions whether it be nail, lash or hair, before they are made OVER again. They are asked to choose which colour of hair dye they prefer – oh, very natural- and, in order to truly discover the essence of their own personality, which bland default celebrity they would most like to look like a Primark version of, e.g. Holly Willoughby. It actually turns out that beauty isn’t natural, it’s applied, and Jenny Frost is here to show you how you put it on. The only real difference between the original girl with the bleached hair, outrageous makeup and skimpy clothing and the girl who emerges with her hair coloured an ‘acceptable’ shade of brown wearing a frumpy dress she’d never have chosen is… the first girl looks like she’d be a bit more fun on a night out. Both are wearing make-up. Both have dyed their hair. Both have adopted the style of a dubious celebrity in a bid to fit popular ideas of what is attractive as promoted in mainstream media. Both are as fake as each other and simply modeling different flavours of fakery.


So what is the point of ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ If appearance is an expression of personality then imposing a one-size-fits-all version of “natural beauty” can only negate individuality. For it to truly celebrate natural beauty, it would have to do something considerably more substantial than merely substitutie garish lipstick for clear gloss. The question of the title is revealing in itself. Snog, Marry, Avoid? So that is lust, love, total rejection, then. The show is deeply rooted in acceptance of a saint/whore dichotomy which categorises women in terms of whether they are Jodie Marsh style sluts or Willoughby-esque potential wives. From this, the show is not about rediscovering the natural beauty of women but instead all about pressuring women who look dangerous and sexually intimidating into becoming coy, pretty ladies who are able to “attract the right man.”


Attracting the right man is somewhat of a mantra in ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ and, accordingly, male judgement is the key impetus for change as subjects realise the devastating truth: random men approached in the street have no interest in marrying them. Unfortunately this is a one-sided dialogue and it never occurs to the women involved that – hey - actually they might not be interested in being betrothed to this judgemental stranger either. Of course not! Because all women really want is for all men to really want them, don’t they? Um, no, that’s ludicrous. But that is exactly the kind of madness that ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ promotes and unless you want to be all out rejected you better decide if you are the PVC-skirted sex kitten type doomed never to find the right man or the girl in the matronly dress made out of marriage material.


It is a shame that ‘Snog Marry Avoid?’ so completely fails in its objectives however there is hope yet. One possible improvement would make it much more authentic and, indeed, much more entertaining: why not push this idea of natural beauty? Round up the usual suspects in their stilettos and force them to remove all make-up, scrub off their fake tan, stop brushing their hair, even stop waxing their legs and underarms. Put them in brown, shapeless sacks. This is beauty at its most natural; let’s make this the new ideal. Let’s start with you, Jenny Frost, and see if they let you model Playboy knickers then, you saucy little hypocrite. On the other hand, we could always look to the real problem at the heart of this admittedly troubling fakery and start making over attitudes. After all, in a society where Abi Titmuss earns more posing in a nurse’s uniform than she ever can as a nurse and Katie Price wins ‘Woman of the Year’ in a women’s magazine, who can argue with mass produced sex as a means to success? The man on the street may not want to marry you, but a footballer inevitably will.

On Perez Hilton.

What better way to begin a blog than by attacking your very least favourite one?

When self-proclaimed “Queen of all media” Perez Hilton began his celebrity-baiting blog the premise was clear and attractive: he was an outsider, an unashamed aficionado of celebrity culture, a proud fanboy. His ventures into the world of celebrity appealed because, essentially, he was one of us. Readers could relate to his giddy excitement upon seeing Nicole Richie in a restaurant, and loved that he was uncool enough to express this excitement when he reported it back to us. The tone was of an adolescent boy bragging to his friends about how far he had got with the hottest girl in school: obnoxious, yes, but strangely endearing in its naivety and misguided sense of accomplishment. It began as an “anti-blog” and Perez offered his site up as a much-required antidote to the seemingly endless online journals devoted to joyless introspection and pseudo-intellectual ramblings. Perez was quoted at the time admitting that he found writing about celebrities “much more entertaining” than using his own life as his muse – a fairly depressing revelation that nevertheless many readers could empathise with – and so his blog began with unapologetic escapism as its objective. His mission was never particularly noble, but nor was it harmful.

By 2007, Perez Hilton’s site was an unprecedented success which could be counted on to rake in over eight million page views a day. The outsider was unarguably no longer on the outside. As his star continues to rise Perez continues to write about the lives of his favourite celebrities, unfortunately his new favourite celebrity appears to be himself. And, boy, is he a fan. Researching Perez before he became Perez (that’ll be Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr, then) it is hardly surprising to discover that his initial aim in life was to become an actor – an ambition which never came to fruition. This accounts, then, for the so-bitter-it-stings tone he adopts with regards to certain hugely successful celebrity actors. What it doesn’t account for, however, are the myriad of hypocrisies and contradictions to be found within the Perez Hilton ethos which, with an alleged eight million accesses a day, certainly deserves further investigation.

One particularly troubling aspect of Perez Hilton’s website is his tendency to use sexual jealousy as a justification for outright misogyny. His long-running vendetta against Vanessa Hudgens – an otherwise perfectly inoffensive twenty one year old Disney starlet – is deeply rooted in his well documented crush on her partner Zac Efron, and this jealousy manifests itself in cruel and unusual ways. Referring to her as “that thing” and “whatsherface” negates her considerable success as well as her basic right to be considered as a human being, and is particularly appalling in contexts such as “whatsherface’s voice makes us wanna rip her hair off.” The underlying and recurring motif of violence against these women “break a leg (seriously)” takes the familiar tone of gossip magazine bitchiness to new, disturbing and personal levels. This glimpse reveals a darker side of the candy-pink website aimed at the young fans of such stars. At times it reads like the twisted monologue of a Bret Easton Ellis character as Perez decides that Vanessa does not “deserve” to have Zac, presumably unlike Perez himself – a thirty two year old man. The clean-cut Disney stars as subject only make his demonic rants more perplexing to an uneasy reader. Similarly, his obsessive idolisation of Lady Gaga – his “wifey” – can be seen to lean squarely towards the Single White Female side of fandom.

PerezHilton.com is now very much centred on Perez Hilton and regular readers must be familiar with his own personal struggles against weight gain and alleged bullying from other celebrities. Where Perez’s attempt to gain sympathy fails, however, is in his juxtaposition of documenting his own heroic battle with his weight (in the kind of language found usually in the realms of Greek mythology) alongside endless articles denigrating the A to Z list of Hollywood for flaws he has established the existence of in their appearance. Essentially Perez’s struggle is not a struggle against bullying, but a struggle to become the biggest bully in the playground. From the current Heat magazine climate it seems that society places celebrity bullying at around the same level as illegally downloading music in terms of being a victimless crime, but is it so victimless? Arguably not, looking at the case of Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. In response to Perez’s relentless attempts to destroy any semblance of her self-esteem, Fergie penned a song named ‘Pedestal’ in which she asks, understandably, if not particularly artfully:

“You hide behind computer screens/ So that you don’t have to be seen/ how can a person be so mean?”

Although intended to convey sass and indifference the song betrays hints of hurt and understandable bewilderment at the intensity of his one-sided relationship with her media persona. Again, in Elle magazine, she is quoted as having said: "It has hurt in the past when people say things like how 'fugly' I am or how horrible I look. Look, when you're trying to juggle all of this in your life, sometimes you're not going to look perfect.” Tactfully, Perez reported this article alongside a picture of her with FUGALICIOUS scribbled across her forehead. Upon challenges from Fergie’s bandmate Will.I.Am over his behaviour, Perez responded by declaring him to be a “faggot.”

This perfectly directs us to Perez’s political outlook, which is as fantastically delusional and self-centred as you would expect. Even without considering his own use of the exact homophobic language he protests – he campaigned for actor Isaiah Washington to be fired for using “faggot” as an insult - his crusade against sexuality discrimination rings hollow. Desperate pleas for equality and an end to ignorance sit somewhat uncomfortably alongside his persistent tendency to post pictures of teenage girls defaced with ejaculating penises and captions like “slut” and “whore”. Misogyny one, homophobia nil. His work for the LGBT community also has the political sensitivity of Bernard Manning as Perez staggers around tinsel-town militantly outing homosexual celebrities against their will, an act he claims to be liberating but which clearly creates an atmosphere of paranoia and repression unseen in Hollywood since the days of the McCarthy trials.

One of his more recent attempts to raise awareness of the oppression faced by the homosexual community, or at least raise awareness of himself, took the confusing form of a hate campaign against beauty pageant entrant Carrie Prejean. As a judge on the panel Perez elected to quiz Evangelical Christian Prejean on her stance on the subject of gay marriage. Balancing her desire to stay true to her belief system, her desire to handle the question with appropriate diplomacy and her desire, of course, to win the competition, Carrie Prejean answered thusly:

“Well I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And, you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that, I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman”

This awkward, incoherent answer was not the vitriolic bile of a woman who hates gay people. It was a weak assertion of the belief system she has been indoctrinated into since birth. Perez Hilton, however, as the Che Gay-vara of our generation, decided that the appropriate revolutionary action to take would be to label this unsuspecting young woman a “dumb bitch” and make her a universal poster-girl for homophobia, using his vulgar website and undeserved celebrity status as a platform to defeat, not homophobic ignorance, but Carrie Prejean herself as an individual.

Perez Hilton’s blog used to be a link to the celebrity world – we saw it through his eyes and could almost communicate with our favourite celebrities through the medium of Perez: our representative on the other side. Now that sites like Twitter allow for direct contact, Perez becomes woefully redundant. Now that we can receive gossip updates first hand from the celebrity subject, without requiring third party interference, anyone who accesses Perez’s site does so to get his specific twist on the topic.What does Perez think about Mischa Barton’s outfit? Does Perez approve of Kristen Stewart’s new film?

Perhaps this is why he has felt the need to up the ante and abandon his earlier aim: to provide lighthearted investigative journalism which playfully probes the priveliged lives of the rich and beautiful. Defensive about his questionable significance, Perez reinvents himself. Not so much a celebrity blogger as a celebrity social worker, Perez doles out the toughest of tough love advice to people like Lindsay Lohan, or “Lindsanity” as he has christened her, urging her to seek professional help. Boundless in his abilities he provides career guidance to Christina Aguilera on the best possible way to recover from her last album bombing, knowing full well that his monstrous review was instrumental in ensuring disappointing sales. More recently, PerezHilton.com has served as little more than a platform for Perez to canvas Simon Cowell in his bid to become an American Idol judge.

Therefore, if Perez is (as he believes himself to be) the “Queen of all media” then presumably his attitude can be seen to be less the traditional “off with their head” and more “off with that slut’s homophobic head, then let me attach it again with my maliciously-worded guidance, preferably live on television.”

The Queen is dead, long live the Queen.