celebrities are somehow poised between emotional and relational chaos and happiness, serenity, and control over their lives. Will this relationship, this marriage, this friendship work out this time or lead yet again to betrayal and heartbreak? “[We] are invited to play a ‘waiting game’ to see when their hard-won achievements will collapse under the simultaneous weight of relationships, family and career.”86 In this way, they personify most women’s struggles for work-life balance, especially when it comes to juggling having a job with raising a family. More to the point, when female celebrities fail, it legitimates the notion that, for women, achieving such a balance is in fact not possible. We see this push and pull activated in three main narratives that swirl around famous women: the quest for physical perfection, the adherence to norms of decorum and social acceptability, and the maintenance of idealized domesticity in the form of a heterosexual marriage plot and the attainment of selfless motherhood. If they don’t conform to—and bolster—the standard conventions of successful femininity, they will pay. They are the “train wrecks,” out-of-control women who fail to uphold, and even rebel against, traditional, even retrograde, gender norms.
As public figures, the bodies of famous women are constantly on display, extolled as the height of physical beauty and success. “Hot bodies” are a form of cultural capital that allow famous women to secure movie roles, magazine covers, and the attention and adoration of the public. Bodies that do not conform are singled out for ridicule. Women are supposed to be extremely thin and fit. With a few exceptions, being overweight is cause for derision. One magazine told Kate Moss (!) to “tone up her midsection,” while the National Enquirer sniped that “Rosanna Arquette has a beach ball for a belly,” and that “Queen Latifah doesn’t deprive herself—and it shows!” Reese Witherspoon, at the beach with her kids, was pictured with a yellow circle drawn around her stomach and a caption that tells her “it’s time to hit the gym!”
Being too thin is also bad, but a cause for shock and concern instead of ridicule. “Shocking Trend: Stars Flaunt Their Stick Figures” blares In Touch, with yellow circles drawn over the offending parts like “twig shoulders,” “bony back,” and protruding “ribs.” “Stars used to show off their cleavage,” complained the magazine. “Now they show off collarbones.”87 “SKINNY S.O.S!” brays the cover of the Star; “Star’s Scary New Affliction—Foodophobia and It’s Contagious!” “BARES BONES!,” the magazine screams, pointing out celebs whose “collarbones are more concave” and “stomach skin hangs looser.”88
Famous women also come under scrutiny for their actions, and no social taboo is too minor for ridicule or condemnation. Nothing is more important than self-regulation and serious self-monitoring—of your figure, face, hair, outfits, behavior, sexuality, and maternal practices. You also need to manage your career well, but that seems secondary to everything else. Ideal women here are both independent—they have their own professions, money, and sources of success—and yet completely reliant on the love and approval of men. And they get that approval because their economic independence is tempered by their hyperfemininity.89 So you better be a good judge of character, in potential boyfriends or husbands, and in friends, who are also crucial to success and happiness. If you chose wrong, you could end up with one of those numerous celebrity husbands who is discovered to be screwing your nanny on the side.
Proper consumption is of the utmost importance. Celebrity gossip magazines glorify consumerism and have become a showcase for various products, nearly all of them pitched to women. Product placement is ubiquitous and we learn which lipstick, workout clothes, low calorie snacks, nail polish, handbags, headphones, lamps, basinets, vacation resorts, and the like various celebrities swear by. Stars who know exactly which outfit to wear, which restaurant to patronize, and which smoothie to sip gain cultural capital and enhance their influence as marketers. Gossip narratives often revolve around products, presented as a solution to every possible woe. Social media stars, minor and A-list alike, make a living peddling everything from gadgets to sneakers to cosmetics. By purchasing what they love and recommend, you can be a little like them too. Ad pages seek to mimic such features, with banner headlines like “Hollywood Summer Trends” or “Fun in the Sun Celebrity Favorites” introducing readers to perfume, “high fashion” backpacks, and “interactive jewelry.”90
Some of these stories are geared at teaching middle-class people how to consume like the stars, but at a fraction of the cost, thus gaining access to the good life. Others, like Life & Style’s “Money I$ No Object,” present the good life as totally inaccessible, showing “diva” Mariah Carey sporting $1,500 Tom Ford sandals, a $5,600 minidress, and a thirty-five-carat diamond engagement ring estimated at $10 million.91 While these stories revel in conspicuous consumption and make hierarchies based on wealth seem perfectly legitimate, even exciting and deeply enviable, they also stoke our resentments about income inequality. Especially galling are the features about how much celebrities spend on clothes and jewelry for their infants and toddlers, who in a few months will completely outgrow their little Gucci leather jackets or Prada dresses. To avoid any potentially negative blowback from the trappings of wealth, famous women must also be polite, deferential, and friendly. Stars who are deemed “high maintenance” are condemned, for narcissism is a big sin; Life & Style regularly asks readers if stars are behaving like a “Diva or Down-to-Earth,” pitting celebs who pick up their own takeout against glamazons who won’t lift a finger to open a car door.
But celebrity narratives insist that the most important goal for famous women, no matter how wealthy, independent, or successful in their careers, is to find a loving, heterosexual relationship (ideally, with a “soul mate”) in order to be truly happy. Women must be in a romantic relationship, and these are always “blissful” and “perfect” until the nasty breakup.
Here’s where the men come in. The ideal catch is financially successful, caring, faithful, attractive, fun-loving, and supportive: an independent yet domesticated man. Cheating, drinking too much, or drug abuse are signs that the man is unable to restrain his appetites or control his emotions and behaviors. Depending on women for money is also a sign of weakness and failure. It was bad enough that former basketball star, and husband of Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom, nearly overdosed in a brothel. But that he “squandered large sums [of money] on booze, drugs and hookers” meant he would be “still going after Khloe’s money.”92 The worst crime, however, is domestic abuse. In this world men must protect their women.
A typically laudatory story noted that Romain Dauriac, husband of Scarlett Johansson, who was “exhausting herself” on the set of her latest movie, “[came] to the rescue” by renting a nearby house “so he could help care for her and their daughter [Rose, twenty-one months].”93 In a fake “world exclusive” cover story, Life & Style announced “A Baby for George!” (Clooney), implying that his wife Amal was pregnant. Inside, however, we learn they are supposedly planning to have a child in the next year or so because “Amal is ready to be a mom, and George is doing everything to make her dream come true.” But he was also “born to be a dad,” is “truly great” with children, and “he’ll make an incredible father.” In a sidebar (and in contrast to the ageism directed at women), we meet “famous dads” who “welcomed newborns at age 55—and older!”94 In Life & Style’s “Boyfriend Report Card,” swimmer Michael Phelps comes in for a world of hurt, earning a C–, because he’s been “slacking a bit on daddy duty” by not changing enough diapers.95 Kourtney Kardashian’s on-again, off-again boyfriend and party animal Scott Disick (and father of her three children) is regularly chastised for “dating a new girl every week,” for drinking too much and falling off the wagon, and for needing to get a job.96 The “runt of the Kardashian litter [and] f*ckup father of Kourtney’s three children,” a man “without any skills,” sniped GQ online, makes his money for doing nothing: appearing at clubs and agreeing to stay for one hour. For this and his other failings, he is “routinely mocked on national television.”97
While men’s appearance does not come under near the scrutiny that women’s do, these magazines have also started trashing men’s bodies, jeering at those with “man boobs” or who are “man blobs” or “beached
