Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s

by Sarah Ditum

A scathing reexamination of the lives of nine female celebrities in the 2000s, and the sexist, exploitative culture that took them down

Welcome to celebrity culture in the early the reign of Perez Hilton, celebrity sex tapes, and dueling tabloids fed by paparazzi who were willing to do anything to get the shot. It was a time when the Internet was still the Wild West, and when slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and revenge porn were all considered perfectly legitimate. Celebrity was seen as a commodity to be consumed, and for the famous women of this era, they were never as popular—or as vulnerable—as when they were in crisis.

Toxic tells the stories of nine women who defined the hell of celebrity in the 2000s and explores how they were devoured by fame, how they attempted to control their own narratives, and how they succeeded or (more often) failed. These women come from all walks of fame—pop music, acting, reality TV, and WWE wrestling. Some of them you think you know already, and others will be less familiar, but Toxic reveals these women neither as pure victims nor as conniving strategists, but as complex individuals trying to navigate celebrity while under attack from a vicious and fast-changing media. Their portrayal has shaped the way that all women—famous or otherwise—are viewed today, and their experiences preempted the now-universal condition, especially thanks to social media, of living under the public gaze.

In this book, Ditum brings readers back to a time before second chances and redemption arcs, and traces the ripple effects that came in the wake of spending a decade vilifying our idols. We’ll see how these women’s stories intersect with the birth of YouTube, the rise of Internet pornography, and the emergence of Donald Trump as a political force. It’s time to come to terms with how those cultural events shaped the way we see ourselves, our bodies, our relationships, our aspirations, and our presence in the wider world. We are all products of the toxic decade.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Pop Culture, Audiobook, Sociology, Music

340 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 26, 2023

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been trying to put my finger on why I found this book so unsatisfying. As a female who was a 20-something in the noughties and very familiar with the gossip mag treatment of the women discussed in this book (Britney, Paris, Lindsey Lohan, Amy Winehouse, Kim K etc) I expected to feel more connection with the content. But this reads very much like a collection of disjointed college assignments.


I felt the most interesting chapters were on Aaliyah and Janet Jackson, and the book did improve a little as it progressed. But I never really got a strong sense of where the author was going with each chapter and didn't feel this added anything, particularly to existing knowledge or commentary on media and celebrity culture in the 2000s.


For a moment, I thought the conclusion was going to make me feel differently. I agree that Taylor Swift is a great example of how times have changed and how female celebs now have more agency than 20 years ago. But at the same time, there were some glaring omissions about how, for some women, nothing has changed at all. Take Megan Markle, for example. Or Amber Heard. Two obvious examples of how the media and court of public opinion still gleefully tear famous women apart. Literally on the first day I started this book I saw a magazine with an unflattering photo of Megan on the cover and various arrows pointing at her with captions such as "Dark circles", "Painfully thin", "Neglecting her children", "Depressed". This kind of dissection might be less acceptable than in the noughties, but it certainly hasn't gone away. Depending on the woman, media harassment and death by public opinion are still very much alive. 

Take the recent Russell Brand allegations. A quick scan of comments on his YouTube channel demonstrates unquestioning support for him and outright dismissal of any possibility his female accusers might be telling the truth. This is in spite of the fact that Brand was the epitome of salacious male privilege in the 2000s. He's the poster boy for double standards when it comes to gendered media treatment of sexual promiscuity and a party lifestyle. 


The author talks about how she experiences the world now and how foreign it is to think about how women were treated by the media in the first decade of the 21st century. Yes, we've seen vast improvements, but the attitudes remain pervasive. I can't help but feel the author shows some naivete. Any comment section of the internet will reveal concerted efforts to degrade and take down women. J.K Rowling, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michelle Obama, or any woman who comes forward with sexual assault claims against a popular male celebrity has had to contend with dedicated poison campaigns against them. Sure, there is more balance and less tolerance for this kind of bullying, but it exists all the same.

Yes, the focus has shifted; degradation isn't so much incited by women's sexual freedom or  perceived sexuality, but it does target those who break the rules of acceptable womanhood: Megan is a troublemaker who doesn't know her place, Amber Heard is 'Gone Girl' incarnate, Michelle Obama looks like a man... the rules for talking about famous women in public may have evolved but woe betide any women singled out as an exception. Personally, i think its fair to say that plenty of female celebrities are still considered fair game for harassment today, some on par with the 2000s.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is so much wrong in the world, but you know what? Sometimes, yes, sometimes we make progress: The way famous women were treated in the noughties are unthinkable today. We made it happen, folks. Sarah Ditum looks at the lives of nine women who were abused by the media and thus: the public (that is enabling the media by paying for the content):
- Britney Spears
- Paris Hilton
- Lindsay Lohan
- Aaliyah
- Janet Jackson
- Amy Winehouse
- Kim Kardashian
- Chyna (WWE fighter who died of a drug overdose - I didn't know her before, but then again, I'm German)
- Jennifer Aniston

Britney and Paris have by now published their own memoirs (The Woman in Me and Paris: The Memoir) which, to be frank, have a lot more to say about the phenomenon than Ditum, and partly outdate her takes (e.g., we now know Britney's "Everytime" was in fact about the abortion Timberlake talked her into, not a rather tame response to "Cry Me A River"). Also, it's not like her book includes radically new insights about the other protagonists. But then again, the merit of the nine essays lies in how Ditum paints a larger picture by contrasting the experiences of these different women, which evolves into a reflection of a cultural climate that now, thankfully, almost seems reactionary: The "Upskirt decade" between 1998-2013 (yes, upskirting used to be perfectly legal - why did those sluts wear skirts in public if they didn't want men to lie down and photograph under their garments, right?! *sigh*).

Then again, even powerful women like Taylor Swift still get slut-shamed for choices that are nobody's business but her own, two-time Oscar winner Billie Eilish is body-shamed for allegedly being not thin enough, and it was Kim Kardashian who glamorized undergoing life-threatening surgeries like BBL to enhance one's own appearance to the current standard. Ditum's book shows though that we are moving into the right direction.

The book could go deeper and add more media and feminist theory, but it is certainly an interesting read, especially for people who haven't pondered the phenomenon it tackles before.

[Trin · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Something wasn't sitting right with me, and so I went and looked at the author's twitter and discovered she's a transphobe who uses her platform to promote lies and conspiracy theories to harm a marginalized group. I'm not interested in the supposed feminism of anyone who shares these views.

[Kassie · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was something that made me uncomfortable about Ditum's coverage of female celebrities during, what she calls the "upskirt era" of the early 2000s. Her citations are uneven, giving a slap-dash feel to the research, hinting it may be incomplete. The ethics of Perez Hilton and TMZ have been the topic of books, articles, and opinion pieces for over a decade; Ditum adds little new to an ongoing conversation. Ditum makes some missteps, some of which are more slight, like criticizing a post-9/11 romcom set in NYC for not being gritty (?) enough, but others are more odious.

Admittedly, I didn't finish Toxic: Women, Fame, and the Tabloid 2000s. I made it through the Aaliyah chapter. It is immediately clear that Aaliyah isn't the focus of the chapter, R. Kelly is. Ditum suggests R. Kelly became a "hero" of Chicago's Black community and was able to escape consequences because of the two-fold belief that "women lied to hurt Black men and the belief that if Black men did hurt women, that mattered less than the fact of racism." Ditum does not address the race of the women, a baffling oversight for someone trying to support their argument by citing Crenshaw and invoking Emmett Till. That's when I called it quits.

[Vony · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was already thinking this read like a bad undergrad essay. Then the author deadnamed someone and I thought....huh maybe it's just poor wording? No, it was just plain deadnaming. Bad writing, bad editing. But i persevered. Gave up after the chapter on Aaliyah...which was actually about R Kelly and where the author uncomfortably retold abuse he carried out on a minor (not Aaliyah) in unnecessary detail. The author wanted to be academic but this is just regurgitation of tabloid articles with some mining of other people's trauma pretending to be feminism (?!). This book is not feminist.

[Taylor Sabol · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book had a great concept but was insane in its execution. The sheer amount of tangents but also the lack of primary sources... I love a maligned woman but this was all over the place. why did she start talking about 9/11 in the lindsey lohan chapter????

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Skip it lol you know this stuff

[Manic Booksy Dreamgirl]

I enjoyed this book until the author chose to deadname Elliot Page. Assuming this was an honest mistake I read the book in good faith and originally reviewed it generously. I feel differently now that I've seen that this wasn't an isolated incident.

[Ciara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Popular culture has recently turned the mirror on itself. Re-examinations of the way society devoured famous (or infamous) women for LOLs in the not-so-distant past have become a popular form of entertainment. Examples include the miniseries "Pam & Tommy" on Hulu, the several documentaries about Britney Spears & her conservatorship, the rehabilitation of Paris Hilton as a crusader against child abuse, "American Crime Story: Impeachment" (which tells the Monica Lewinsky story from her point of view), & the like. This book is a continuation of that theme.

Each chapter focuses on a different woman who achieved fame in the 2000s & examines the ways in misogyny (& often its favored companion, racism) informed her story. Each woman is probably famous enough to be known by one name only: Britney. Aaliyah. Paris. Kim. Lindsey. Jen. If you read "Star" magazine, TMZ, or Perez Hilton in the aughts, you know exactly who these women are, & you probably remember at least the rough outlines of the scandals that surrounded them. In many cases, their stories overlap & feed one another.

Ditum casts the aughts as a particularly fraught & disgusting time to be a woman, going so far as to name it the Upskirt Decade. She has a compelling story explaining the moniker, but even so...It felt a bit polemical to me. I'm a woman, only a year or two older than Ditum, so I lived through this entire period in tandem with her in terms of cultural consciousness. I can attest to the fact that the world is different for women now than it was twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. But often when people do these looks back at recent history, they fall into the Steven Pinker trap of perceiving That Time as Bad & Now Things are Better. There's an assumption that there's an inevitable march toward progress. Acknowledging the obvious issues of the past lets us off the hook for addressing the obvious issues of the now.

Obviously addressing the misogyny of the now is not the remit of Ditum's book. As a history of the way the extraordinarily misogynist tabloid culture of the 2000s impacted the lives of the nine woman featured in this book, it does what it says on the tin, & is impressively well-researched & extensively footnoted. I greatly appreciated the examination into how race often played an unspoken role in shaping some of these women's stories. Ditum asks some diffiult questions about this topic, which is great. The overall tone of the book was a little bit ginned-up for me--kind of like someone trying to sustain the energy of an outraged Nextdoor post for 300 pages. Ditum had to make a few leaps of logic & really focus on the negative to get there. But as her footnotes show, everything she cited really did happen. To real people, often young women who didn't understand what they were getting into. For an audience of other young women & girls who were consciously or unconsciously absorbing the narratives as a guide on how to be a woman in the 21st century. I was there & it truly was a toxic situation.

A must-read for anyone interested in feminism, modern media, the cultural currency of fame, tabloid culture, or any of the celebrities featured within.

[Katrisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book Ditum takes us back to the early 2000’s to what she refers to as the “upskirt decade” because apparently there was a court case that said upskirt photos were ok because women couldn’t expect privacy in a public place (WTH?!?). And that just set the tone for celebrity coverage in the early days of widespread internet. This book is about different women’s treatment in the media and how that treatment reflected societal norms. It was interesting to me to read this book about a time that I remember living through and to be reminded of how some things have changed and how others have not. Fame requires media coverage but at the end of the day there are actual human beings at the other end of the camera/gossip site/etc and norms change about what is considered ok and what is over the line. Mainly I appreciated this book for making me think about questions of fame vs. privacy and how society views women’s bodies.

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Surface level account of how the media treated women in the noughties. Easy to read but lacking in depth.

[Kaitlynn Hayter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book despite the lower reviews, because it’s a topic I’m so interested in. It fell short. The author went on redundant tangents- not to mention the weird deadnaming - not once, not twice, but three times. nearly every chapter had more focus on the men in these women’s lives than the women themselves. This book reads very factual.

[Suzannah Rowntree]

I was alive and occasionally reading the news throughout the aughts, and so I knew bits and pieces of the stories in this book, from Britney Spears' breakdown to Jennifer Aniston's divorce, from the hatred directed at Paris Hilton to the moment Janet Jackson was stripped in front of the whole world. But I only knew bits and pieces of the story, and I couldn't help being intrigued when I saw this book.

This is a look at what it was like to be a famous woman in the 2000s, a decade in which internet tabloids peddled gossip, speculation, and vitriol to the world, an era of revenge porn, upskirt photographs, sex tapes, bidding wars over Britney Spears' virginity, and more. Ditum argues that in 2013, MeToo and social media helped to put an end to the worst excesses of the internet tabloids. But until then, famous women were forced into an impossible dilemma, choosing to commodify themselves but finding fame an insatiable monster that took more than they were willing to sell. "It was the signature error of the Upskirt Decade - to think that by surrendering the boundaries others were intent on breaching, you could regain your own power."

Sometimes I wonder where the line is between gossip and history, and I appreciated that most of the time Ditum deals with the salacious details and speculation at arm's length, instead discussing what the media furore of the aughts can tell us about that cultural moment. I learned a lot that I didn't know before - why R Kelly is a name of infamy, exactly how the Kardashians made their name, and that I somehow managed to miss the moral panic over Janet Jackson at the SuperBowl (Idk folks, it just seemed so blindingly obvious from the woman's body language that the thing happened totally without her collusion or intent!). I also came away feeling like Ditum had put her finger on a lot of the things that bothered me about how these women were treated - how messed up it was that Britney was commodified as a sexy virgin, for instance.

Not all the chapters had as much to say as the others - a standout for me was the chapter on Paris Hilton, and how she seemed to understand that the public wanted someone to hate and was willing to good-humouredly provide them with just that, up until the moment the vitriol just became too much for her. I also found the chapter on Amy Winehouse incredibly sad and thought-provoking: instead of sex, Ditum seems to suggest that Amy sold messy authenticity (in the style of an old-fashioned Romantic poet) and was doomed by a narrative of her own creation.

The whole book was endlessly thought-provoking, even in the chapters where it seemed to have less to say. I'm sure it's not perfect or the final word on these women and their lives, but it was very illuminating to me, and I also enjoyed the final comments on developments since:

In early 2023, singer Lizzo tweeted her own criticism of cancelation as a strategy. “This may be a random time to say this but it’s on my heart . . . cancel culture is appropriation,” she wrote. “There was real outrage from truly marginalized people and now it’s become trendy, misused and misdirected.” In the Upskirt Decade, a female celebrity’s reputation was predicated on viciously policed sexual purity; in the 2020s, the purity test had become a moral one.

What I'm taking away from TOXIC is that the aughts were a wild time to be a woman, even a non-famous one, and I'm so glad my goddaughters and niblings are going to grow up in a world that's even just a little bit better.

[Bethan Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pop culture really is my bag, so Sarah Ditum was preaching to the choir with this one. I enjoyed the Jen chapter particularly, and its position on privacy and expectations around reproduction, and Chyna wasn't someone I was familiar with before reading this book as I'm not a wrestling bro so I found that chapter particularly interesting. 4 stars, rather than 5, due to the author seemingly coming for Taylor Swift out of left field in the conclusion. Yes, she writes songs about past relationships but doesn't she deserve the right to some degree of privacy about these matters in interviews if requested, just like you said the other 9 women should have done in the Upskirt Decade? But other than this small point, great read for the pop girlies.

[Joe Ursell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A generous 3 stars, more like 2.5. Fascinating and important subject matter, but I found it disappointingly dry, unfocussed and lacking in much insight. Food for thought, though.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. In Toxic: Women, Fame and Tabloid 2000s, late Gex X/elder millennial author Sarah Ditum (b. 1980/1) writes a series of moderately cohesive essays on various female celebrities who attracted major tabloid and gossip blog attention in the 2000s (with her definition of the 2000s being extended on either end, using Britney Spears' public debut in 1998 as an arbitrary start date and the release of Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and TI's problematic song Blurred Lines in 2013 as an arbitrary end date). Ditum posits that the 2000s were a decade of "casual cruelty" to female celebrities and women in general, where exposed deviations from expected sexual purity and gender norms were causes for vilification. To illustrate her thesis, she profiles nine female celebrities: Britney Spears (singer), Paris Hilton (socialite), Lindsay Lohan (actress), Aaliyah (singer), Janet Jackson (singer), Amy Winehouse (singer), Kim Kardashian (reality TV personality), Chyna (pro wrestler turned adult film actress), and Jennifer Aniston (actress). Of note, three of these women have passed away (Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, and Chyna), eight are American (Amy Winehouse was British), and only two are women of color (Aaliyah and Janet Jackson). Some chapters discuss mostly the celebrity and how their personal life became tabloid fodder, while others don't really focus on the celebrity and contain a broader discourse on celebrity culture in that niche area (for instance, the Amy Winehouse chapter deals with British celebrity culture, Simon Fuller's many talent shows at the turn of the millenium, and the differential ways celebrities in the UK were treated at the time -- as an American who followed British acts in the '00s, I remember the British print tabloid stories about acts I followed always seemed particularly cruel and salacious, on the level of Perez Hilton in the US).

I'm also a millennial who was a teen during most of the '00s and remember most of the scandals mentioned in the book; like Ditum, looking back on those days now, it's striking at times to think of what was normalized then that's considered verboten nowadays (mostly for the better). The research is generally good (I didn't hear any obvious errors), though I thought some of the celebrities profiled seemed to be odd choices (particularly Kardashian, who orchestrated her own fame and thus seemed to be largely in control of her own narrative, and Chyna, who I don't remember getting the mainstream coverage of the rest). There were also obvious differences between the profiled celebrities who were already grown adults at the start of their fame (Aniston) vs. those who were still minors when they became public figures (Lohan, Spears).

Given that Ditum is British, I would love to see her write a similar book focused on female British tabloid targets of the same time period, and how factors like race and socioeconomic status impacted the narrative; i.e., how someone like Lily Allen (solo singer; white and nepo baby-esque) was treated compared to Cheryl (Girls Aloud singer; white and raised in council estates) or Kerry Katona (Atomic kitten singer; white and raised in foster care), versus people of color like Mutya Buena (Sugababes singer; Filipina/Irish), Keisha Buchanan (Sugababes singer; Jamaican), and Mel B (Spice Girls singer; mixed Afro-Caribbean and white).

As always, I'd recommend reading source material (memoirs written by subjects in this book) for better perspective. These include Britney Spears' 2023 memoir The Woman in Me, and I would also add Jessica Simpson's 2020 memoir Open Book and the late Sarah Harding's 2021 memoir Hear Me Out to that list (Sarah was briefly mentioned during the Amy Winehouse chapter).

My statistics:
Book 161 for 2024
Book 1764 cumulatively

[Manisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to the audiobook.

This was pretty interesting and entertaining!

[Jade · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great premise, and I quite enjoyed parts of it, but ultimately I wish it had gone deeper and brought in more feminist theory. Many chapters felt like a re-hashing of histories that I—having only been a baby in the 00’s—already knew.
Still, the good stuff: I found the introduction really solid and do agree with Ditum’s premise that how we treat and view celebrities directly translates into how we view and treat each other. The court case she mentions, in which a photographer took an upskirt photo of a RANDOM 16 YEAR OLD GIRL, is jolting. But, of course, if we can accept that Miley Cyrus’ crotch is public property, why would every random teenage girl’s privacy not come into question.
I also thought the last three chapters—on Kim Kardashian, pro-wrestler Chyna, and Jennifer Aniston respectively—were very strong. These cases, unlike those of Britney, Paris and Lindsay, are not dissected as much in popular culture, and Ditum writes about these women with empathy and wisdom. She manages to balance Kim’s creation of an unachievable body type with empathy for her constant objectification. I thought the discussion of Jen’s position as an avatar for a generation of childless women was also fascinating.
I found the conclusion quite dissatisfying, however. While I agree with Ditum that celebrity coverage in magazines and on TV has soften, and that celebrities have a lot more power to speak directly to their audiences, I am not sure if this has completely reversed their treatment. Instead, I think the general public have taken up the mantel of the mean-spirited misogyny previously found on gossip blogs and reality TV. Perez Hilton has nothing on stan twitter, and celebrities have—arguably—less privacy than ever.
Overall, you could find a lot of this information in different books, but I do think it’s interesting to think about and discuss.
As a side note, I did notice how much Ditum deadnames trans celebrities throughout and realized about halfway through that she’s a bit of a TERF…. This adds a bit of irony when she discusses respecting celebrities only to go on to completely bypass their chosen names…

[jessi · Rating 1 out of 5]

no this book pissed me awwwwfffff. minus the fact that this author is transphobic and dead names every single trans person she mentions…this book is just bad. nothing new to say on the feminisim front, felt more exploitative than illuminating, and somehow every woman’s story became about a man. would give zero stars if i could xoxo

[Emily Cottrill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting for anyone who doesn’t know much about celebrities in the 00s but I found it to be un focussed and was often left wondering what point the author was trying to make, often it felt like the women were not the focus of the chapters.

[b (tobias forge's version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting look back at the 2000s, but I feel like Ditum at times engages in the same tabloid tone that she is criticizing, especially with Amy Winehouse and Chyna, which left a bad taste in my mouth.

Edit 07/25/24: Oh, and apparently she's a TERF, so yeah, don't read this book.

[KP · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a mess just like the 2000s lol

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to reflect on what it was like growing up during the "upskirt decade" - the early 2000s - and how that shaped me. Recommend as an audiobook.

[kory. · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is a complete mess, in a pink pussy hat wearing, mean girls tattoo having, white feminist kind of way.

the book claims to be an examination of “the sexist, exploitative culture” that took down famous women in the 2000s, and the first three chapters (britney, paris, lindsay) did that pretty well, but from there on, the focus seemed lost; it wasn’t really about their rise to fame and how the media/public made a sport of tearing them down anymore. in several chapters, the women even took a bit of a backseat. there’s such an unnecessary amount of detail on topics that are often only tangentially related to these women’s fame and treatment.

furthermore, i got the vibe that ditum has some internalized misogyny to work through. she often struggled to take these women at their word, seemingly to come off as neutral and not biased or overstating these women’s importance or perfection (did we need to know that ditum thought a bunch of linday’s movies were garbage or that britney’s music was mindless and soulless?), but it started to feel like she agreed with some of the awful things the media/public said about them.

here’s a list of things that felt like red flags while reading:

deadnaming and/or misgendering every single trans/nonbinary person mentioned. which tracks, considering the author’s social media is filled with transphobia (which i found out with like two chapters left while i was checking reviews and i’m not about to dnf a book that far into it, especially when i have so many Thoughts).

“seventeen year old mistress” to refer to a teen girl who was raped by a grown man and manipulated into trying to kill his wife for him.

“labia barely concealed by a scant band of magenta fabric” to describe a micro-mini skirt paris wore in a photoshoot when she was a teenager.

arguing amy was “protecting a reality also-ran from media scorn” a few lines after noting amy mocked paris’ sex tape.

“britney’s image played so explicitly with the lolita trope, it seemed impossible she wasn’t doing it knowingly” she was a teenager directed by adults (usually men), how about we direct our attention to them, yeah?

for some reason positioning britney and paris as less talented than lindsay. do we need to compare?

saying a woman being sexual is “objectifying herself.”

arguing kim wasn’t “damaged” or “wounded” in her rise to fame.

concluding with “the snark, spite, and violation that had been acceptable aspects of the treatment of celebrities (particularly women) were no longer to be tolerated” (in what world, babe?).

aside from implying taylor swift escaped the media/public scorn that popstars before her experienced, the author also said kim proved taylor was “disingenuous,” argued taylor’s criticism of a “mild joke from two self-proclaimed feminist comedians” was misplaced, and implied taylor couldn’t be upset by the attention on her love life because she sang songs about it. regarding the latter, the media attention and scorn and mockery taylor received, even from her own peers, about her dating life is not experienced by every singer who sings about their love life, so yeah, she had a right to be upset.

using chrissy teigen as “the ultimate example” of a woman being found guilty of “far lesser infractions” because of “cancel culture.” chrissy literally bullied a teenager and told them to kill themself, which ditum described as “hardly notable” and that the “purpose” of “women” like the one chrissy bullied (again, a teenager; also not a woman, they are nonbinary) was “to be hated.” just because what someone did wasn’t rape (the author contrasted chrissy’s situation against r. kelly to show how inconsequential it was) doesn’t mean wasn’t bad and shouldn’t have consequences.

using demi lovato and selena gomez as examples of a popstar’s career no longer being at risk due to a “cruelly scrutinized breakdown” because they “turned their mental illness into highly sympathetic content.” the shit demi went through during their disney days when they were struggling and the internet bullying both of them received for their mental illnesses isn’t magically erased because their documentaries about it years later were well received.

arguing jack the ripper’s victims were classed as prostitutes “simply because they had been in a public space when they were murdered.” this is a “feminist” rewriting of history. there are several reasons to believe the women were prostitutes, but the only reason to passionately insist they weren’t against any evidence is the belief that them being prostitutes somehow makes them “bad victims” and thus their murders less tragic. also, citing hallie rubenfeld’s book is questionable at best, considering how much of it is admitted guesswork and how its existence is a desperate attempt to clear the women’s names from the accusation of sex work. lastly, using already dehumanized women as a mere talking point is gross.

and finally, a rant. ditum bringing up “choice feminism” during her conversation about “girls gone wild” was frustrating. ditum used greta christina (a queer, feminist writer) as an example of a “self-described sex-positive feminist” (ditum’s use of “self-described” implies disagreement or doubt) who “advances” the “doctrine” of “choice feminism,” because she once argued the girls on “girls gone wild” shouldn’t all be “patronized” as victims and looked upon with “pity and contempt” because it strips them of their sexual agency (and those like them) for making “unpopular sexual choices.”

ditum then quoted michaela l. ferguson as saying “choice feminism” is a “weak substitute for power” and that it “divorces choice from the broader institutional, political, historical, and social contexts in which choices take place. this means that choice feminism obscures how our choices are shaped for us.” this is very clearly portrayed as the correct view: we should believe every girl on “girls gone wild” was a victim not because they were too drunk to consent or minors or were possibly coerced, but because even if none of that applied, the misogynistic nature of “girls gone wild” negates their choice, consent, and agency.

however. yes, it’s important to take into account the social, political, institutional, etc. environment in which choices are made, because just like a yes isn’t consensual if saying no wasn’t an option (or a safe option), choice is an illusion if there aren’t safe understood accessible alternative options. but i don’t agree with arguing individual choice is completely irrelevant, because that does indeed remove agency, as well as creates a slippery slope to arguing that women cannot genuinely consent to anything because of the misogynistic, patriarchal society we live in. people actually argue that women can’t consent to certain sex with men (rough, submissive, etc.) because they’ve been “conditioned” to want it. and if that isn’t patronizing and infantilizing women and completely removing their agency under the guise of feminism, then i don’t know what is.

ditum criticizing “choice feminism” was made even more frustrating by her inability to stand by that position for the rest of the book. she flopped over to the “choice feminism” side by saying a teenaged lindsay doing a sexualized skit on snl was “claiming a modicum of authority over the way she was presented,” but considering lindsay was acting out someone else’s words and direction (and likely couldn’t object lest she be deemed a difficult diva or replaced with someone more willing to play the game), did she really have any authority in that moment?

ditum then flopped back to the anti “choice feminism” side by disagreeing with lindsay’s assessment of marylin taking back control by choosing to give people what they had always taken from her, saying it’s flawed “to think that by surrendering the boundaries others were intent on breaching, you could regain your power.” ditum then flopped back to the “choice feminism” side one more time by saying it’s “infantilizing,” “degrading,” and “disrespectful” for people to “present janet purely as a victim” (regarding the superbowl) because she still had agency, even if it was “constrained.” it would’ve been nice if ditum had chosen a stance and then stuck to it, rather than flip flopping based on whatever best fit her personal perception of a situation.

content/trigger warnings; mentions or discussions of misogyny, sexism, homophobia, d slur, transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, death, murder, grooming (of a minor), sexual abuse (including that of a minor), rape (including that of a minor), sexual assault, sexual harassment, slut shaming, body shaming, child abuse, mental illness, addiction, eating disorders, r slur, 9/11, car accidents, duis, plane crashes, racism, anti-blackness, misogynoir, amatonormativity, infertility,

[Grace DelMastro · Rating 3 out of 5]

For someone who’s into celebrities, pop culture, etc. I definitely found this book interesting. It tells the stories of 9 women in the late 90s/2000s and how the tabloids impacted their lives and careers and y’all… media and society in general at that time were soo “casually cruel.” A millennial might argue that nothing in this book is new information, but for me being a baby when all of this was happening, I didn’t know a lot of the details of these women’s stories so again, I thought it was interesting. HOWEVER, I hated how it was written. It’s giving graduate thesis lol. And some of the sentences were so long and structured so weird, there would be like a separate thought within the same sentence. I felt like I really had to focus to get through it at times, but maybe that’s because I’m not a big non-fiction girl to begin with idk. Would recommend though if you’re interested in the topic!

[Tziona · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fascinating look at the shift of culture around the rise of internet fame, and the impacts of social media on famous women. The look at the intersection between what is public and private painted a really great story, that allowed the story of multiple famous women to show the hypocrisy of fame in the early 2000's.

[Tori]

A sad exploration of the realities of being a celebrity women (mostly cis-white hetero) experiences in the 2000's.

[Crystal Reaume · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really really interesting!

[Paulette S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommend to any pop culture heads

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nonfiction book about several famous women in the early 2000's (such as Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Janet Jackson, Amy Winehouse, and a few others) and how our culture rips them to shreds despite their fame, money and power.

As one example, Nipplegate (Janet Jackson's breast being accidentally exposed during the Super Bowl) was not Janet's fault, not Justin Timberlake's fault, but who was 90% of the blame directed towards? Janet, not Justin. Why? Embedded sociological sexism in our society, even in the 21st century. This sounds like celebrity whining but the examples in the book are pretty compelling. VERY light, very cheesy pop culture read, but an interesting topic.