Do Keira Knightley, Sienna Miller, Victoria Beckham and others deserve the vitriol? And how do we decide who to hate?
Think of Keira Knightley. Now, what are you getting? Pretty in The Duchess? Ravishing in that green Atonement dress? Nope? Didn’t think so. Because, if you are like 90% of the female population, you thought of Keira Knightley and went straight to irritation, even hate. “Ugh! I can’t stand Keira,” is the customary reaction. It’s so common, in fact, that even Keira has spoken about her reputation for bringing women together in bonding bile-fests. “Well, I’m doing a good thing for women all over the country, then,” she said this summer. “I think that’s a very positive thing.”
In modern life there is an official list of likes and dislikes, and Keira is somewhere near the top of the dislike list, along with seal-clubbing, bendy buses and . . . a heck of a lot of other women in the public eye. We loathe these women. And when I say “we”, I don’t just mean teenage girls flicking through Heat, but ordinary women, including mothers of girls Keira’s age. I was busy blithely “hating” Keira the other day (though not nearly as much as I’ve been known to “hate” Minnie Driver), when it dawned on me that something is not right if it has become perfectly normal to call up a girlfriend and, at some point, have a good bitch about a totally blameless stranger.
Rewind a month, and pole position was occupied not by Keira but by her friend Sienna Miller. (Someone, and you know it definitely wasn’t a man, even felt moved to sneak out in the night and spray-paint “slut” across the wall of her north London house. Before that, it was Victoria Beckham. Then there was Rebecca Loos, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ulrika and Kate Beckinsale. Sometimes we attempt to identify good reasons for all this hostility — Keira is too skinny and therefore a bad role model; Zeta-Jones too spoilt — but none of them ever rings true. “I think if you put yourself in the public forum, then that’s what you put yourself up for, I guess,” said Knightley. But why her, as opposed to, say, the ever-lovable Kylie? And how do you explain the level of vitriol?
“It’s all about insecurity,” reckons the PR guru Max Clifford. “You get a pretty girl, and the women will say, ‘Look at the size of her bum.’ It’s getting worse, because it’s increasingly difficult to be a woman these days — there are so many more opportunities for self-improvement, and the more pressure women feel, the nastier it gets.”
The media has to take some of the blame, with gossip magazines encouraging us to focus on women’s looks, bodies and clothes, rather than on the attributes we should be celebrating, such as kindness and wit. “Feminism provided the culture to admire women for their qualities, not their visual appearance,” says the psychologist Jacqui Marson. “Now the whole celebrity-magazine culture has given us permission to direct our gaze at women’s minute physical flaws and choices, and to pick them apart. There has been a big shift, and the feeling of sisterhood we used to have doesn’t exist any more.”
So who are the sort of women who find themselves in the firing line? Maureen Rice, the editor of Psychologies magazine, whose recent cover stars include Marcia Cross, Julianne Moore and Jerry Hall (all women we love), claims there is a definite checklist of do’s and don’ts. “We don’t like it if women have success very easily. We like talent, tenacity, savvy, a woman who has earned it. And we like a journey — women who have been through the mill and back.” This element of struggle is the key. We can celebrate beauty and success, but only if it has been hard won. “Look at Victoria Beckham. She has been hated, and recently won us back, because we love a woman who gets knocked down and keeps on getting back up. The problem with Keira is it all looks too easy. Where is the suffering? Where is the implicit recognition that she owes it to us?”
Rice’s journey theory explains why few people can muster animosity towards Amy Winehouse, why Katie Price has such a monster following, and why the older woman is more likely to meet with our approval. Helen Mirren was not universally adored, but now she’s our favourite sexy sixtysomething. Meryl Streep — how annoying was she circa The French Lieutenant’s Woman? — is now Fabulous Meryl who gets to the core of what women are all about.
For Mary Portas, it is also to do with accessibility. “Deep down, women know that very few of us can be a Sienna or Keira, and if that is what men want, it is very scary for women, so if we knock it, we feel better. It’s much easier to ‘love’ someone like Meryl Streep, because they are kind of accessible and much less of a threat.”
Jennifer Aniston, according to Rice, typifies the kind of woman who gets it right: “We know her and her problems; she’s pretty but she’s also quite vulnerable, and she always looks to girls to help her out.” Kate Moss — through bad boyfriends and terrible life decisions — continues to have our support, because she’s a girl’s girl. They are all women who, as Rice puts it, “never turn their back on women”, and, in times when our sense of sisterhood is under threat, this is crucial.
Our loves and hates can quickly change. We hated Angelina for stealing Brad, but she redeemed herself through a combination of good works and sidestepping the LA rat race. We loved Debbie Harry, but now she’s had surgery, we’re suspending our approval until further notice. Lily Allen was cuteish, we thought; now we think she’s a pain . . . and so on. The game for us is deciding who is in and who is out, because we like to think that we know these women and can read them the way we read our friends. “We are hypercritical of ourselves and of the women around us,” says Portas. “We are interested in what makes other women tick, and criticising is what we like to do.”
Rice reckons we use women in the public eye to sort out our own thoughts: “Very little of it is about the women themselves; it is a way to clarify our own shifting opinions.” So, if we slag off Sienna for sleeping with a married man, it’s a way of testing how we feel about this in our own minds. Would we? Could we? Plus, it allows us to work out where our peers stand in relation to us. From this perspective, “Oh, I hate Victoria Beckham too” isn’t just idle banter, it establishes that you have a connection.
“I think women’s lives are so diverse now that we need to make these connections,” says Portas. “We want to find people who are PLU [people like us].”
Still, this doesn’t quite explain the level of vitriol poured on these women. I may be bonding with my sisters when I tut-tut about Peaches Geldof’s marriage, but what is happening when Fern Britten is vilified for not publicising her gastric band?
Fern’s only crime, remember, was to lose weight by means of surgical intervention. But then Fern is not just any woman on TV: she is a woman whose appeal hinges on being normal, fun and, above all, herself. So while on one level the gastric band was just a dietary aid, on another it represented the heinous betrayal of all those women out there who were relying on Fern to keep it real and give them permission to be themselves. The response was extreme because her audience feels extremely uncertain of who they’re meant to be.
“If you line up behind someone and then they change the rules, people don’t like it,” says Rice. “Madonna’s meant to be the feminist warrior, and then she has all this plastic surgery, and people are furious with her for looking desperate.” i edited weight talk Nothing is guaranteed to irk us faster than a woman we thought was one of us turning out to be something completely different.
One thing is certain, whatever the motives, we do ourselves a disservice by attacking one another. We tell ourselves we have our reasons, yet the truth is that you can never guarantee who is going to win women over and who is going to wind them up. i edited political talk.
There is no credible defence for the way we dislike. Even Max Clifford — a man rarely surprised by anything — is “astonished” by how the female mind works, and never more so than during the Beckham-Loos affair, back in 2004: “I thought, for once, Victoria Beckham would get sympathy. But what actually happened was nobody criticised David, everyone criticised Rebecca, and it was Victoria who ultimately got the blame. It was all her fault: if she had been over there, looking after him, it wouldn’t have happened. I think that typifies how women are.”
Maybe, in the end, there is no mystery: we just need to be nicer to each other.
I feel like I have read the same article 100 times already. It doesn't apply to me or other women I know. But I do agree about these two statements in general:
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We don’t like it if women have success very easily
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Maybe, in the end, there is no mystery: we just need to be nicer to each other.
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I don't dislike Keira for anything other than the weird things she says..
I used to not like certain women for absolutely no reason, but then I realized that was stupid because a) they don't care and b) it's easier to ignore them.
I think it's kind of pointless to actively hate celebrities, they are easy enough to ignore.
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I don't think I would say I hate anyone. There might be people who don't interest me or who bore me, but hate? I don't even know these people so how could I have a valid reason to hate anyone and what's the point?
“It’s all about insecurity,” reckons the PR guru Max Clifford. “You get a pretty girl, and the women will say, ‘Look at the size of her bum.’ It’s getting worse, because it’s increasingly difficult to be a woman these days — there are so many more opportunities for self-improvement, and the more pressure women feel, the nastier it gets.”
hmm,no?I'm not insecure,thanks.If i dislike a celebrity,it has nothing to do with how they look or because i want a part of her body,it could be for their actions,or just plain indifference.God forbid a woman dislikes another for something non superficial.
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Sometimes I find myself disliking the way celebrity culture promotes certain women, for instance, when hard-core porn stars are presented as glossy aspirational figures with a sanitised day job - the female market for that is huge, judging from their book sales and so on.
Those women live their own lives, and if someone presents them with an opportunity to become a mainstream celebrity with more earning opportunities, any woman should make the most of things. Yet there's also the undercurrent of what they're promoting, which seems to get lost amid the haste to repackage their stories as tales of emotional survival or smart business moves. It's like the reality of sex work has been airbrushed into reading like a soap opera.
So I dislike the trend, but who could blame the women themselves for responding to the chance to exploit the demand for it, when there's usually large sums of money on offer and the prospect of more respect from other women? They don't commission the novels or the articles or the TV series - the media does.
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Personally, I look at it in terms of publicity and talent.
For instance, I have nothing against Natalie Portman or Keira Knightley's personalities but they're both terrible actresses and it seems as though everyone is blind to this!
It's like a bandwagon. I saw Antonement, Keira's presence irked the **** out of me, James McAvoy thankfully managed to save the movie. So I don't dislike or "hate" them because they have it too easy, I dislike the amount of positive publicity they get for having their minimal acting skills.
Although to be fair, Natalie was very talented until she turned 20. I miss her Professional days, excellent work!
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I agree, we cannot deny there is a lot of envy out there, I read things written about Keira and Victoria, the British favourite targets, that are simply destructive and makes me wonder how terrible has to be someone's state of mind to write those things, but just because someone complains about a celebrity it does not mean always that insecurity is the reason.
I actually think Keira and Victoria are alright,I certainly do not think they deserve all this vitriol, I may not be their total fan but they are the public eye for a reason and I respect that, but there are other persons out there that are a total waste of space because they simply do absolutely nothing, It does not have to be something I like, they just don't do nothing, aren't we right to complain?
Eugh, this article has some interesting points but ultimately Rice's message is: anyone we hate has to try to win us over.
PLU? Has she put some sort of patent on that? Not enough time in the day to simply write "people like us"? That's a blatant form of othering, and a shoddy attempt at that. She's assigned an abbreviation for people that are "accepted", and if you're not tagged with that label, you're not One Of Us. And if you're not people like us, you're in the dog house and might have to deal with (sexist) acts of vandalism on your property. Oh well, you're fault. You shouldn't have lived your life on your own terms, because now you're being judged. Take that, Slutty Sienna.
They keep citing how you're liked by being a woman's woman, and for liking women. If I was in Sienna et al's shoes and heard a group of women/girls "bonding" via slander, I can't say I'd be the one to try to win them over.
This is quite the rant, but I'm tired of the subject. It feels like it's been haunting our tongues and finger tips since we learned what the media is -- a synonym for a representation of women that women simply can't meet ... but for some reason want to, and feel inferior when they can't. Women the western-world over need to shape up and take some responsibility.
I don't think the nickname 'Sluttyenna' was coined by a woman - we've got to be aware of the absurd situation of blaming woman-bashing in the media all on other women.
Women liking/disliking female celebrities is an eternal soap opera, because people go in and out of favour. How many celebrities have had mud flung at them, then three years later, are everyone's favourite saint? It's part of the rough-and-tumble of public perception that ALL celebrities have to go through - Rob Lowe, Hugh Grant, they didn't escape either.
Moreover, if we compared women's criticism of female celebrities with the comments that men make when dismissing female celebrities, we'd be running back to the world of women, where suddenly, 'look at her large bum' would now seem a kindly insult.
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Meh, that article doesn't resonate anything with me. Although, I do agree that women should be nicer to each other and support each other more...if that makes any sense.
Personally, I look at it in terms of publicity and talent.
For instance, I have nothing against Natalie Portman or Keira Knightley's personalities but they're both terrible actresses and it seems as though everyone is blind to this!
It's like a bandwagon. I saw Antonement, Keira's presence irked the **** out of me, James McAvoy thankfully managed to save the movie. So I don't dislike or "hate" them because they have it too easy, I dislike the amount of positive publicity they get for having their minimal acting skills.
Although to be fair, Natalie was very talented until she turned 20. I miss her Professional days, excellent work!
thank you sooo much for saying this. i mean.. i ve always kept saying that natalie portman is a terrible. really a terrible actress and i got even banned from one forum for saying such a thing. also.. many people despise me for the fact that i have nothing good to express about natalie. i just see her acting abilities.. and i am baffled. she has nothing to give to the audience.
when it comes to the article. more and more celebrities are dumber and dumber each year. people like victoria beckham or sienna miller are all over front pages but they have nothing vital or interesting to say or to present. except for wearing clothes and hooking up with different guys each month (that doesnt go with victoria).
and when i read on perezhilton.com that some skank named aubrey o'day supports barack obama it makes me laugh. she can't even spell the name obama.
i am not againt the beauty of this people. i am againt their stupidity, emptiness, shallowness and so on. they are not good enough to be called 'celebrities'. it takes more than that what they present.
We hate some women celebrities because they seem to be successful just because of their looks, and that hardly seems to be anything a real woman should aim for.
Keira Knightley is always pouting and somehow playing the same 'type'. (I'm trying but I can't think of any movie yet where she's blown me away with her acting.) Of course she annoys people! And what is more annoying is that she talks about herself as though she is a great beauty and actress.
I don't think it's just about being jealous of their beauty - I mean, I don't think I have any chance of being as beautiful as Cate Blanchett, but I still love her because she makes me believe I can have it all - she's beautiful, got a solid, loving relationship, has an amazing career, is smart, talented and also a mother. When I think of her, I think that maybe it is possible to have everything. (I think that Angelina Jolie fits into a similar category - not that I think I will ever attain her beauty or Brad Pitt, but she is still comes across as being a strong individual who has some sort of work/family balance in life.)
Victoria Beckham is a complete contrast - she also has balanced beauty with children and family, but I don't want to be in a marriage like hers (with a cheating husband!) and her 'career' seems sort of vapid, based on her celebrity rather than any real talent.
And Natalie Portman annoyed me for the longest time but after seeing her in My Blueberry Nights I do finally believe that she is a wonderful actress, and I'm now willing to place her in the 'yes, admire' category.
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