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.