What Say You?

In a story titled "Boys Will Be Boys, Girls Will Be Hounded By The Media," Sunday's New York Times addressed the gender disparities in the media coverage of celebrity trainwrecks.  Why do famous women get so much more attention than their male counterparts when they're going off the rails?

There's certainly been enough recent male wreckage to fill the tabloids, or at least their front pages.  Owen Wilson, Mel Gibson, Kiefer Sutherland, Heath Ledger... all of these men have gone through some definite tabloid-worthy life events, but the magazine covers, as the Times pointed out, are much more likely to feature Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Amy Winehouse.  What's the deal?

According to Us editor Janice Min, female celebrities have women to thank for that.  She said this to NYT:

Almost no female magazines will put a solo male on the cover.  You just don’t. It’s cover death. Women don’t want to read about men unless it’s through another woman: a marriage, a baby, a breakup.

But that seems too simple an explanation.  First of all, you've got to delve a little deeper than all that, right?  It doesn't seem like enough to say, "This is what sells."  Why does it sell?  And does the media itself influence that?  What if they all decided to give equal time to be-penised fuckups?  Wouldn't we still buy their magazines?

NYT quotes psychotherapist to the stars Rebecca Roy: "With men, there’s an emphasis on, ‘he had this issue, but he’s getting over it.'  But with women, it’s like they keep at it, keep at it. It’s almost like taking the wings off of a fly."  That rings a lot truer to me, honestly.  I think we expect a certain amount of wildness and fuckupery from dudes - not just celebrities, but dudes, generally.  It doesn't seem shocking to us when they do drugs, act like fools, smash up cars, and pay too little attention to their kids.  When women do it, that's a scandal.  Because like the headline said, boys will be boys.  Girls will behave, right?

Far be it for me to tsk-tsk.  Peruse the archives here and you'll probably find that I write about women a lot more than I write about men, so I'm in no place to wag my finger at anyone.  I do think it's worth discussing, though.  What do y'all think?  What's the attraction, for you, to the stories about women?  Do you think it's true that women don't want to read about men?  Speak up!

Comments

[Heather]

1. No man is going commando in clothing that barely covers his backside and show of his junk to the world. Besides, among my group of female friends limp, chilled, junk is not an arousal tool in the same way as commando-in-a-short skirt is for our men.

2. Party boys are {my guess} much more likely to hurt themselves or someone else than to go drunk-shopping at the local CVS.

3. The distance between "Whee! I'm fun and sexy in a flirty va-va-voom way, {thud} I just tripped over my purse dog's leash, look at my cute bondage gesture!!!" and TRAINWRECK is a lot farther than, "Hey, another button seems to have popped off my shirt" and TRAINWRECK. Ladies just have a chance to get more momentum going.

I also don't see very much similar between the top three lady-wrecks and someone like Heath or Owen.

[Nina]

Nice catch...never thought of that way

[Angela]

"...limp, chilled, junk is not an arousal tool..."

Can't argue with you there, Heather. ;)

[Miss Britt]

We read what we identify with - in one form or another. Even if it's a trainwreck, there is SOME connection there that makes it interesting.

[Christy]

It doesn't seem like men court the papparazzi the same way that the young starlets do. Yes, the photogs have stalked Britney & Lindsey to a scary degree but they & Paris Hilton started it by using the papparazzi to achieve a certain level of fame.
To me its more of a sexist thing because women are the main audience of these magazines. Who do you gossip about more with your friends - the men you know or the women you know? The same thing applies to magazine interest.