Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Unpacking the "Slut" Narratives of Britney, Monica, Paris, Pamela & Others with Jessica Bennett (NYT)

Transcript

Unpacking the "Slut" Narratives of Britney, Monica, Paris, Pamela & Others with Jessica Bennett (NYT) · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on
0:15
Speaker 1: pretty this is pretty smart. So you know, I started
0:21
Speaker 1: saying random things before the podcast starts, like, I've just
0:25
Speaker 1: been choosing one thing that's been on my mind that
0:28
Speaker 1: week to share, and the one I'm thinking about this
0:31
Speaker 1: week is frustration and desire. And it's a little communication
0:37
Speaker 1: tool that I learned that I just want to pass
0:39
Speaker 1: on because it's been so helpful in my life. So
0:43
Speaker 1: the idea is that behind every frustration is a wish,
0:46
Speaker 1: and behind every criticism is an unexpressed desire. So the
0:51
Speaker 1: idea in communication is that if you're frustrated with somebody,
0:55
Speaker 1: the common response is to tell them why you're annoyed,
1:00
Speaker 1: why you're angry, why you're disappointed. They most likely hear
1:03
Speaker 1: you out and validate your feelings and say, I'm sorry,
1:09
Speaker 1: but what's to say It's not going to happen again.
1:13
Speaker 1: And so in this communication tactic, instead of necessarily expressing
1:18
Speaker 1: your frustration, you actually request something. You vocalize the desire
1:25
Speaker 1: that's behind your frustration. I'll give you an example. Say
1:31
Speaker 1: you have a friend who you feel like doesn't reciprocate
1:34
Speaker 1: the energy that you're putting out. And instead of sitting
1:38
Speaker 1: down and having a conversation or a phone conversation and saying,
1:41
Speaker 1: I just feel like you don't care about this friendship
1:44
Speaker 1: as much as I do. You don't put as much
1:46
Speaker 1: energy into it as much as I do. You don't
1:49
Speaker 1: care about my birthday the way I care about your birthday, etc. Etc. Right,
1:53
Speaker 1: you throw in the kitchen sink. Instead of doing that,
1:56
Speaker 1: you say this, our friendship is really important to me,
2:00
Speaker 1: and in order for me to feel close to you
2:03
Speaker 1: and really feel valued, I need you to call me
2:06
Speaker 1: once a week. So instead of throwing in the kitchen
2:09
Speaker 1: sink and being frustrated, you just expressed what you needed,
2:12
Speaker 1: what you wanted. I actually noticed I was doing this
2:16
Speaker 1: when I was dating somebody because I was airing out
2:19
Speaker 1: frustrations and I wasn't getting anywhere because I wasn't asking
2:25
Speaker 1: for what I needed. So it was really helpful in
2:29
Speaker 1: my life. I just wanted to pass it on. But
2:32
Speaker 1: now it's time for the episode, because I think today's
2:35
Speaker 1: is really entertaining. Now there's a lot of things I
2:41
Speaker 1: wish I could go back and tell my younger self
2:44
Speaker 1: the superficial things, of course, like use more sunscreen, don't
2:48
Speaker 1: ever go in a tanning bed, and then of course
2:50
Speaker 1: the deeper stuff like don't let other people tell you
2:53
Speaker 1: about yourself. You're the only one who can really tell
2:55
Speaker 1: you about yourself. But if I'm being honest, what I
2:59
Speaker 1: really wish I could give myself is a heads up
3:02
Speaker 1: about all the messaging I'd have to unlearn later in life,
3:06
Speaker 1: mainly because I think the two thousands had a lot
3:08
Speaker 1: of toxic messaging for young girls. I was a young
3:11
Speaker 1: girl in the two thousands, and it was thanks in
3:14
Speaker 1: part to all the tabloids and some mainstream media which
3:18
Speaker 1: was essentially in the business of bullying and shaming girls
3:21
Speaker 1: and women.
3:22
Speaker 2: There's one subject we didn't discuss.
3:24
Speaker 1: What was that Everyone's talking about it? Well, your breasts.
3:33
Speaker 2: You seem to get furious when the talk show host
3:36
Speaker 2: comes up with this subject. Okay, that's in general. What
3:40
Speaker 2: do you think about breast implants? Just in general?
3:43
Speaker 3: Well, I think if that's what you want to do
3:45
Speaker 3: and that would make you happy, then I see nothing
3:48
Speaker 3: wrong with it.
3:49
Speaker 2: But I haven't done that.
3:51
Speaker 1: That's Britney Spears being interviewed in nineteen ninety seven, she's
3:55
Speaker 1: just seventeen, there being asked about her feelings about breast augmentation.
4:00
Speaker 1: That clip recently resurfaced after the twenty twenty one New
4:04
Speaker 1: York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears, which opened the floodgates
4:08
Speaker 1: for a re examination of how women like Brittany and
4:12
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan were treated. Since then, we've
4:15
Speaker 1: seen these women and many more come forward and tell
4:18
Speaker 1: their stories in a post me too world. They've used
4:22
Speaker 1: their voices in a new way. And while in hindsight,
4:26
Speaker 1: the way we treated those women was not okay in
4:29
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, the values they were purporting as
4:32
Speaker 1: cool were also not okay. Eating disorders, drugs, excessive partying,
4:39
Speaker 1: Lindsay Lohan, Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton on the covers of
4:43
Speaker 1: magazines was brutal for me when I was growing up.
4:47
Speaker 1: Let's first start with the complete lack of diversity of
4:49
Speaker 1: hollywooded girls that those tabloids were showcasing. And also in
4:54
Speaker 1: many communities they were the trendy body type. Mine was
4:59
Speaker 1: far from them. I kind of, in hindsight, feel traumatized
5:04
Speaker 1: by well traumatized with a lowercase T by media from
5:09
Speaker 1: that time. But there's one clip that stays in my
5:13
Speaker 1: head that always gave me a little bit of hope.
5:17
Speaker 1: I used to watch Oprah when I got home from school.
5:20
Speaker 1: I lived in Chicago where she taped, so it would
5:22
Speaker 1: air in the morning, and then I would watch the
5:23
Speaker 1: rerun in the afternoon or later in life, when DVR
5:27
Speaker 1: was invented, I watched.
5:29
Speaker 2: It via DVR.
5:31
Speaker 1: But I'll never forget this clip from two thousand and five.
5:34
Speaker 1: I was in eighth grade and it was at the
5:36
Speaker 1: height of the Paris Hilton Simple Life era. All of
5:39
Speaker 1: my friends thought Paris Hilton was the coolest person to
5:41
Speaker 1: walk the earth, and I couldn't have felt more opposite.
5:46
Speaker 1: And then I saw Reese Witherspoon on this episode of Oprah.
5:50
Speaker 4: And one of the other things that you said that
5:52
Speaker 4: struck me was that you were really, really sick.
5:56
Speaker 1: This is how you were quoted of all of the
5:58
Speaker 1: other young blonde star in Hollywood who think that it's
6:02
Speaker 1: cute to act stupid.
6:03
Speaker 2: You know, it's not necessarily starlets. I was talking about
6:07
Speaker 2: this sort of.
6:07
Speaker 3: New movement amongst young women that it's cute to be dumb.
6:11
Speaker 3: Our mothers and our grandmothers and the women came afore
6:14
Speaker 3: us fought so hard to overcome the stereotype of women
6:17
Speaker 3: being not smart enough to vote, not smart enough to
6:20
Speaker 3: go to higher education, not have great jobs, and to
6:23
Speaker 3: sort of single handedly go out in a very public
6:26
Speaker 3: way and say, you know, I don't really care about
6:28
Speaker 3: what they achieved. You know, I'm just gonna be stupid,
6:31
Speaker 3: and that's cute. I just think that's kind of I
6:34
Speaker 3: don't know, I just don't think it's a good message
6:36
Speaker 3: for young women, and I.
6:37
Speaker 2: Don't think it's up stupid.
6:40
Speaker 1: That clip helped change things for me, and we actually
6:44
Speaker 1: dig deeper on it later in the episode. Just a
6:47
Speaker 1: heads up, I kind of go off on Paris Hilton
6:49
Speaker 1: at the end of this conversation. But all of this,
6:54
Speaker 1: the good and the bad of the quote unquote bad
6:58
Speaker 1: Girls of the two thousands, bring me to our guest
7:01
Speaker 1: Today Award winning journalist Jessica Bennett. She's fascinated with the
7:06
Speaker 1: cultural moment we're in now. Jessica has spent her career
7:10
Speaker 1: focusing a gender lens on social issues. She says history
7:14
Speaker 1: and culture are being reevaluated from all angles, from statues
7:18
Speaker 1: to art, to our collective treatment of some of the
7:21
Speaker 1: world's biggest pop stars. But there's also smaller, more insidious moments,
7:27
Speaker 1: ones that she's diving into in her new podcast Retrospect,
7:30
Speaker 1: launching September twenty first. In it, Jessica revisits the cultural
7:35
Speaker 1: moments she can't stop thinking about.
7:37
Speaker 2: This is two thousand and seven. This is like very
7:39
Speaker 2: much the Perez Hilton TMZ tabloid blog era, where on
7:48
Speaker 2: a daily basis you're saying, like Amy Winehouse falling all
7:52
Speaker 2: over herself because she was on drugs. You see. I
7:55
Speaker 2: remember an incessant feed of Kate Moss and her then boyfriend.
7:59
Speaker 2: It was actually Paris and Brittany and maybe also Lindsay
8:03
Speaker 2: Lohan sort of falling all over each other, and it
8:05
Speaker 2: was the girl's gone wild effect. And I remember just
8:07
Speaker 2: thinking at the time, like something about that hubbed me
8:10
Speaker 2: the wrong way. It wasn't really looking at the culture
8:12
Speaker 2: that seemed to, like you said, delight in watching this
8:16
Speaker 2: all occur. I started thinking back to that when the
8:20
Speaker 2: Free Brittany movement began and there were all of these
8:24
Speaker 2: reconsiderations of different women's celebrities who had been very viciously
8:29
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways followed and torn down and
8:33
Speaker 2: criticized and shamed by the media. We haven't heard from
8:37
Speaker 2: Monica Lewinsky in a decade, like she has basically been
8:40
Speaker 2: in hiding, Like at one point she'd tried to launch
8:44
Speaker 2: like a handbag line and was just endlessly mocked, and
8:47
Speaker 2: then she sort of just went.
8:48
Speaker 1: Away and she became like a punchline of every joke
8:52
Speaker 1: and a lyric in music.
8:55
Speaker 2: Once I started going down the strabbit hole.
8:57
Speaker 1: I remember watching the Barbara Walters interview being like, this
9:00
Speaker 1: little slut.
9:03
Speaker 2: And that is exactly how she was portrayed and conveyed
9:07
Speaker 2: in the media, Like she was called a little tart
9:09
Speaker 2: word that we don't really use now, but back then
9:11
Speaker 2: basically met little slug. There were polls on like reputable
9:15
Speaker 2: news organization websites being like, do you think that Monica
9:20
Speaker 2: Lewinsky is basically a slug? And to look back on it,
9:25
Speaker 2: at the time she wrote this Vanity Fair article, I
9:27
Speaker 2: was like, this woman was hardly over eight. She had
9:33
Speaker 2: no power in this situation. Sure, we didn't have really
9:38
Speaker 2: a complex understanding of power dynamics and the way that
9:42
Speaker 2: sexual harassment played out then, but this was a lot
9:46
Speaker 2: more complicated than it appeared, and certainly, to think about
9:50
Speaker 2: it now, it was much more complicated than what a slut.
9:55
Speaker 1: So today serves as a reminder that the two thousands
9:57
Speaker 1: did a number on many of us. So let's reprogram, revisit,
10:02
Speaker 1: and revise. Plus how far have we really come and
10:08
Speaker 1: what work do we still have to do? Okay, So, Jessica,
10:17
Speaker 1: one of the things I love is that you go
10:19
Speaker 1: out of your way to tell women's stories. And I'm
10:21
Speaker 1: obsessed with obituaries and eulogies. Actually not just okay, that's
10:27
Speaker 1: so funny. Well, I'm wondering if you loved them too,
10:31
Speaker 1: because you found it Overlooked, which writes obits for women
10:35
Speaker 1: who never got them.
10:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so No, I wasn't always obsessed with obituaries,
10:41
Speaker 2: but once I started learning a little bit more about them,
10:44
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is actually so important, Like
10:48
Speaker 2: this is the last word on a person's life, and
10:51
Speaker 2: so the person whose hands AIP is in to write
10:54
Speaker 2: that story, it's really important, Like that's a big responsibility.
10:59
Speaker 2: And so the idea for Overlooked came from the fact
11:03
Speaker 2: that most often the people writing those obituaries were men,
11:07
Speaker 2: and most often the people they were writing about were
11:10
Speaker 2: men and white men, and there were all these women
11:14
Speaker 2: and people of color who were left out of the equasion.
11:17
Speaker 2: And if that's like the final word on a person's life, like,
11:20
Speaker 2: certainly there's not less women dying, So why was that?
11:25
Speaker 2: But I'm curious to hear what was it about obituaries
11:29
Speaker 2: that you'd always been obsessed with.
11:30
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with people's stories. That's why I love great writers,
11:34
Speaker 1: and I like hearing about the reflections other people have.
11:40
Speaker 1: There's this quote I love. The rabbi that did the
11:43
Speaker 1: eulogy at my grandfather's funeral said people die twice. The
11:48
Speaker 1: first time is when their physical body goes in. The
11:51
Speaker 1: second time is when we stop telling their stories. That's
11:54
Speaker 1: always stayed with me, and so I just like hearing
11:56
Speaker 1: these people's stories. And oftentimes the reflections that people have
12:01
Speaker 1: are different than the way they saw themselves. So it's
12:03
Speaker 1: really interesting.
12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And then, you know,
12:08
Speaker 2: having learned more about how the writing of the obituary
12:12
Speaker 2: process works, particularly at the New York Times, and learning
12:17
Speaker 2: that oftentimes you're writing these obituaries in advance of the
12:20
Speaker 2: person's death because you want to have something prepare it
12:22
Speaker 2: for when they may pass or if it's you know,
12:25
Speaker 2: if they're ill or something. There's so much that goes
12:27
Speaker 2: into it, and yeah, it is like an artifact of
12:30
Speaker 2: somebody's legacy, and so it's so important. And to take
12:34
Speaker 2: it back to the project, there are so many women
12:36
Speaker 2: who never got that. So that's what we tried to
12:38
Speaker 2: do with Overlift, which was posthumously rite obituaries for women
12:43
Speaker 2: who never received them in the pages of the New
12:45
Speaker 2: York Times but clearly should have.
12:47
Speaker 1: Well, how do you have time to do this as
12:49
Speaker 1: the first ever gender editor for the New York Times
12:51
Speaker 1: as well?
12:52
Speaker 2: Well, thank god I'm no longer gender editor.
12:55
Speaker 1: Congrat thanks.
12:57
Speaker 2: So I have much more flexibility and time now to
13:00
Speaker 2: pick and choose the projects that I want to do.
13:02
Speaker 2: But yes, being a gender editor was slightly insane and
13:06
Speaker 2: very large job. And I think part of the reason
13:08
Speaker 2: why that job doesn't exist anymore is because it was
13:12
Speaker 2: too much for one person. Like, really, you need gender
13:15
Speaker 2: editors in every department of the newspaper, and so we
13:20
Speaker 2: kind of have that. Now.
13:22
Speaker 1: Did you pitch the role initially?
13:25
Speaker 2: Sort of? I pitched the role of a gender correspondent,
13:30
Speaker 2: and then over the course of many months and like
13:33
Speaker 2: exhausting discussions and interviews and you know, a certain points
13:37
Speaker 2: store I was like, I'm never going to get this job.
13:39
Speaker 2: I should just give up. It morphed into an editor position,
13:42
Speaker 2: but yes, the case I initially made was like, this
13:46
Speaker 2: is an area that has been traditionally or historically neglected,
13:51
Speaker 2: and you know, let's try to correct that, and let's
13:54
Speaker 2: do it in more of an overt way.
13:56
Speaker 1: I don't know the inner workings of the publication, but
13:59
Speaker 1: from an outside perspective, I think that role probably pushed
14:05
Speaker 1: other publications to create a role about gender, like a
14:09
Speaker 1: gender editor at their publications too, because there was a
14:13
Speaker 1: whole new sect of writing that had not been out before,
14:17
Speaker 1: and that was that's like where my interest lies. So
14:20
Speaker 1: I remember being like, oh, there's all these articles all
14:22
Speaker 1: of a sudden.
14:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, that definitely was the case, and one my position
14:27
Speaker 2: was announced, you know, the Washington Post shortly thereafter appointed
14:30
Speaker 2: a gender correspondent, and then interestingly, a lot of foreign
14:34
Speaker 2: outlets hired or appointed gender editors or gender correspondents or
14:39
Speaker 2: sometimes gender onbuds people. So I was actually in France recently,
14:44
Speaker 2: where gender editors have become a huge thing and there
14:46
Speaker 2: are a number of outlets that all of gender editors,
14:50
Speaker 2: so they were very much inspired by what we had done,
14:52
Speaker 2: which is amazing, and those positions continue to live on.
14:55
Speaker 1: So a lot of your work helped steer the coverage
14:58
Speaker 1: for the me too movement at The New York Times.
15:01
Speaker 1: And I've heard you talk about the shift that you
15:04
Speaker 1: witnessed in the media during that phase. Would you say
15:07
Speaker 1: that it was twenty eighteen for the most part.
15:10
Speaker 2: I think beginning in twenty seventeen. So I actually started
15:14
Speaker 2: this job as gender editor, like right as the me
15:16
Speaker 2: too movement was exploding, So oh wow. I acaided the
15:20
Speaker 2: role in twenty seventeen. And right around that time was
15:23
Speaker 2: when the first major story of our Harvard Weinstein was
15:26
Speaker 2: published in The Times. And so I remember I was
15:29
Speaker 2: on my final like pre going back to full time
15:32
Speaker 2: work vacation, and my phone was just exploding because that
15:36
Speaker 2: story had come out and the hashtag started being used,
15:39
Speaker 2: and suddenly everything was different.
15:41
Speaker 1: When you say everything was different internally for you, how
15:45
Speaker 1: was it different? Because I was actually anchoring a morning
15:48
Speaker 1: news show during that time, and a lot changed for me.
15:50
Speaker 1: So I'm curious what changed in your own role In
15:54
Speaker 1: my own role in my world in the way that
15:57
Speaker 1: it was okay or not okay to be treated, in
15:59
Speaker 1: how how much I could speak up or not so interesting.
16:03
Speaker 1: A lot changed, I would say, it took a while,
16:06
Speaker 1: but for the better.
16:08
Speaker 2: For me personally, it was like I had been sort
16:10
Speaker 2: of beating the trum talking about and writing about these issues,
16:14
Speaker 2: but this was the thing that took it into the mainstream.
16:19
Speaker 2: And so personally, I'm not sure that much had changed.
16:23
Speaker 2: Like I was already in this role where it was
16:25
Speaker 2: my job to talk about these types of things, but suddenly,
16:30
Speaker 2: I'm sure you remember this, but you were like opening
16:32
Speaker 2: your phone refreshing Twitter constantly to see like who the
16:35
Speaker 2: next person to fall was, and how this global movement
16:39
Speaker 2: had spread. And suddenly like there was a French term
16:42
Speaker 2: for me too, and then there was a Spanish term
16:44
Speaker 2: for it, and it had spread to Italy, and like
16:46
Speaker 2: politicians were tumbling and newscasters were tumbling, and keeping up
16:51
Speaker 2: and keeping track of it all was a twenty four
16:54
Speaker 2: or seven job. And so for me in that new role,
16:58
Speaker 2: it was just like Nona. So I was like, Okay,
17:00
Speaker 2: this is what we're doing, this is what we're covering.
17:02
Speaker 2: We're going to cover it from every angle that there
17:04
Speaker 2: is and see it through. I think, like in my
17:07
Speaker 2: personal life, it got a lot of women to think
17:12
Speaker 2: about experiences that they had in a new way and
17:15
Speaker 2: maybe recognize them in a way that they hadn't before.
17:18
Speaker 2: And I think it just showed the world just how
17:23
Speaker 2: persistent sexual harassment that assault was, and in particular in
17:27
Speaker 2: the workplace.
17:28
Speaker 1: It felt like it opened up a portal of language
17:32
Speaker 1: and vocabulary to talk about it, yeah, which was really great.
17:37
Speaker 2: And that didn't stop for a number of years. I mean,
17:39
Speaker 2: you could argue that it hasn't stopped, but it's not
17:42
Speaker 2: in the news in a daily basis the way it was.
17:46
Speaker 2: But it was like it started with this story about
17:49
Speaker 2: a celebrity, and most of the women who were speaking
17:52
Speaker 2: out against this man were also celebrities, And then it
17:56
Speaker 2: spread into factories and union and people on the front
18:02
Speaker 2: lines of every industry and in academia, and I mean
18:06
Speaker 2: on and on, and then I think you saw cultural
18:10
Speaker 2: ripple effects that were less about you know, overt harassment
18:14
Speaker 2: or assault, but smaller things like what should women have
18:17
Speaker 2: to wear it work? Or is it really appropriate that
18:20
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two or whenever it was, we still
18:24
Speaker 2: had a swimsuit contest at the Miss America pageant, and also,
18:27
Speaker 2: by the way, like our pageant's weird or even in
18:31
Speaker 2: places like South Korea, there was a big movement to
18:34
Speaker 2: stop wearing makeup. I believe like it was reverberating and
18:38
Speaker 2: rippling in all of these smaller ways as well.
18:41
Speaker 1: We started asking questions culturally that had just been assumed
18:46
Speaker 1: answers before yeah.
18:47
Speaker 2: Or that hadn't been asked really at all, or at
18:50
Speaker 2: least not in a really public way. They'd been kind
18:53
Speaker 2: of whispered between friends.
18:55
Speaker 1: So Jonah Hill had text messages come out a few
18:59
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and his ex girlfriend that posted them posted
19:04
Speaker 1: these very private messages, and it hit something in women
19:08
Speaker 1: across the country because a lot of them, including myself,
19:14
Speaker 1: definitely had been in situations that felt controlling and it
19:18
Speaker 1: triggered something. But I felt complicated about the situation because
19:23
Speaker 1: I felt like a little icky that she exposed these
19:26
Speaker 1: private messages that had been assumed to be private. And
19:30
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, I was like, well, women
19:32
Speaker 1: have been silenced for so long and the only thing
19:34
Speaker 1: that ever changed anything was women speaking up. I don't
19:38
Speaker 1: know what the right answer is here. Have you thought
19:41
Speaker 1: about this at all.
19:42
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly followed that as it was happening.
19:45
Speaker 2: And I mean, I think we're living in a world
19:48
Speaker 2: right now where people are really into psychologizing everything and
19:53
Speaker 2: being armchair psychologists and taking words that used to mean
19:58
Speaker 2: something like gaslighting or emotional labor or trauma even or
20:03
Speaker 2: triggered even and like applying them to just like every
20:07
Speaker 2: day minicha. And so I think part of the kind
20:12
Speaker 2: of glomming onto that story was like, Oh, this guy
20:14
Speaker 2: doesn't know what boundaries even means, Like this isn't the
20:17
Speaker 2: right definition of boundaries, and boundaries are like very hashtag
20:22
Speaker 2: trending at the moment, like all anyone can talk about
20:25
Speaker 2: his boundaries like there's all sorts of means on TikTok whatever.
20:28
Speaker 2: Everyone's talking about boundaries that may or may not really
20:31
Speaker 2: mean what boundaries setting boundaries means in psychology and real therapy.
20:37
Speaker 2: So I think like that's part of it. And there
20:39
Speaker 2: was certainly a quote unquote gas lady vibe to the
20:44
Speaker 2: whole thing in which he was telling her who she
20:47
Speaker 2: could hang out with and making it seem like he
20:51
Speaker 2: was somehow a victim when actually he seemed to be
20:54
Speaker 2: trying to control her behavior. But yeah, I mean when
21:00
Speaker 2: these cases play out and people screenshot messages and there's
21:04
Speaker 2: no context given to them, and everyone starts to pile on,
21:08
Speaker 2: and then like the Daily Mail is covering it, and
21:10
Speaker 2: then like all these other people are chiming in, and
21:12
Speaker 2: you're sort of like, Okay, what is even the factual
21:15
Speaker 2: story here? Like, things certainly get distorted, and so I
21:19
Speaker 2: always have a little bit of skepticism in these things
21:24
Speaker 2: that seem to play out entirely on social media. That's said,
21:27
Speaker 2: of course, yes, it's important to speak up, but I
21:30
Speaker 2: feel like there's a little bit of a glomming on
21:33
Speaker 2: and delight taken in seeing somebody be publicly shamed.
21:40
Speaker 1: Well, that's a great transition, because the word delight is
21:45
Speaker 1: something that I think could be described as the delight
21:50
Speaker 1: that we took watching Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Nicole Ritchie,
21:56
Speaker 1: even Anne Hathaway at one point was sort of subjected
22:00
Speaker 1: to a lot of media cruelty. So just a little background.
22:04
Speaker 1: Prior to The New York Times, you worked at Newsweek,
22:07
Speaker 1: and in twenty twenty one you criticized a two thousand
22:10
Speaker 1: and seven Newsweek cover published that had Britney Spears and
22:14
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton on the cover with the headline the Girl's
22:16
Speaker 1: Gone Wild Effect. You said that when you remember being
22:19
Speaker 1: mad at the time that it came out. What was
22:22
Speaker 1: going through your mind when you saw that cover?
22:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so this is two thousand and seven. I'm
22:27
Speaker 2: like a junior reporter at Newsweek magazine. This is my
22:31
Speaker 2: first job out of college. This is like very much
22:34
Speaker 2: the Perez Hilton TMZ tabloid blog era, where on a
22:42
Speaker 2: daily basis you're saying, like Amy Winehouse falling all over
22:46
Speaker 2: herself because she was on drugs. You see. I remember
22:50
Speaker 2: an incessant feed of Kate Moss and her then boyfriend
22:53
Speaker 2: whose name I'm now forgetting, but like they were always fighting.
22:55
Speaker 2: Like there was just like this constant thing, the idea
23:00
Speaker 2: of like paparazzi laying down and taking photos up women's skirts,
23:05
Speaker 2: or like when they would be getting out of their
23:07
Speaker 2: SUVs with their bodyguards or whatever, that was so common.
23:10
Speaker 2: There would be like a new image constantly. That's like, oh,
23:13
Speaker 2: look at Brittney Spears flashing us all and actually she
23:16
Speaker 2: wasn't wearing underwear whatever. This was just like the water
23:20
Speaker 2: we were drinking on a daily basis, And I remember
23:25
Speaker 2: this cover story coming out written by a group. I
23:31
Speaker 2: think it was written by a number of really senior
23:33
Speaker 2: level women at the magazine that had this like very
23:37
Speaker 2: trashy tabloid cover. And yes, it was essentially Paris and
23:40
Speaker 2: Brittany and maybe also Lindsay Lohan sort of falling all
23:44
Speaker 2: over each other and it was the girl's gone wild effect.
23:46
Speaker 2: And then it was this very like fear mungery piece
23:49
Speaker 2: that was like, what are they teaching girls with all
23:52
Speaker 2: their like you know, skin showing and not wearing underwear
23:57
Speaker 2: and their thong and like all of that. And I
24:00
Speaker 2: remember just thinking at the time like something about that
24:03
Speaker 2: hubbed me the wrong way, Like it didn't feel like
24:05
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure I could have particulated this. Then
24:07
Speaker 2: I was like in my early twenties, this was my
24:10
Speaker 2: first job, Like what did I know? But it wasn't
24:12
Speaker 2: really looking at the culture that seemed to, like you said,
24:15
Speaker 2: delight in watching this all occur, and the paparazzi that
24:20
Speaker 2: would be literally laying on the ground to like capture
24:23
Speaker 2: these upskirt shots. It was focused on, you know, why
24:27
Speaker 2: wasn't Brittany wearing like a more covering panty or whatnot,
24:32
Speaker 2: And so it rubbed me the wrong way at the time,
24:35
Speaker 2: and I think I probably talked to some of my
24:37
Speaker 2: friend's colleagues about it.
24:39
Speaker 1: Did it rub you the wrong way because you had
24:41
Speaker 1: empathy for these women?
24:43
Speaker 2: Or I think it just felt a little shamey and
24:47
Speaker 2: like it was missing some complexity, Like it felt like
24:51
Speaker 2: a lecture instead of something that could look critically at
24:55
Speaker 2: what was going on.
24:56
Speaker 1: That's interesting because I think I had lesspathy for these women.
25:01
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I even really did have empathy for them,
25:04
Speaker 2: but it felt like the tone of the article was
25:07
Speaker 2: conflating those girls or those young women with like all
25:11
Speaker 2: of us, and you know, I was around the same age.
25:14
Speaker 2: It was just like, how dare you?
25:16
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes we don't know how to articulate something, but
25:19
Speaker 1: it like it hit something in us. So that's obviously
25:21
Speaker 1: you remember that feeling.
25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I started thinking back to that when
25:28
Speaker 2: the Free Brittany movement began and there were all of
25:31
Speaker 2: these reconsiderations of different women's celebrities who had been very
25:36
Speaker 2: viciously in a lot of ways followed and torn down
25:40
Speaker 2: and criticized and shamed by the media. And so when
25:46
Speaker 2: the documentary about Britney Spears came out one of them.
25:50
Speaker 2: Now there have been so many and so many articles
25:52
Speaker 2: as well, but it reminded me of that feeling back
25:56
Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven.
25:58
Speaker 1: Well, you wrote an article about it and it was
26:02
Speaker 1: titled speaking of Brittany dot dot dot, what about all
26:05
Speaker 1: those other women? So after Trump, after Me Too, when
26:11
Speaker 1: covering gender and culture and the pop culture zeitgeist, when
26:16
Speaker 1: do you feel like the conversation really shifted.
26:21
Speaker 2: To looking back on these subjects In I think.
26:24
Speaker 1: There was like a collective consciousness that happened and we
26:27
Speaker 1: were all like, hmm, maybe this wasn't so nice or fair.
26:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was talking about some of the
26:36
Speaker 2: ripple effects of me Too that weren't specifically focused on
26:40
Speaker 2: abuse or the workplace. But we're more about culture. So
26:45
Speaker 2: first you saw statues, it was like, why do we
26:49
Speaker 2: have a statue with this racist slave owner, you know,
26:52
Speaker 2: in front of this university or whatever it might be? Like,
26:54
Speaker 2: is that how come nobody has thought that maybe that
26:57
Speaker 2: shouldn't be representing who we are? And then it became
27:02
Speaker 2: music in a lot of ways. Oh, actually, if you
27:06
Speaker 2: listen to the lyrics of baby It's Cold outside, that
27:10
Speaker 2: like Christmas song that's played every year, Like it's really creepy,
27:15
Speaker 2: and it's basically describing a sexual situation in which the
27:19
Speaker 2: woman baby is coerced, So like that's kind of weird.
27:24
Speaker 2: And then you can start going down this rabbit hole
27:26
Speaker 2: of like, oh my god. Well, like everything we consume,
27:30
Speaker 2: in one way or another, if it came from the past,
27:33
Speaker 2: is probably quote unquote problematic or that I hate because
27:37
Speaker 2: it doesn't like describe to you why it's problematic. It's
27:39
Speaker 2: just like an easy way to shut something down. But
27:42
Speaker 2: often these are problematic in really sexist or racist ways.
27:47
Speaker 2: So Okay, now you're like you've got this thing rolling
27:51
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh my god, Well, like you could
27:53
Speaker 2: just keep going down this path forever, Like look at
27:55
Speaker 2: children's books. What about the books we consumed growing up?
27:58
Speaker 2: What about like teen romance? Now, what about the television
28:01
Speaker 2: shows we watched growing up? Like on and on and
28:04
Speaker 2: on and on, And so I think that me too,
28:07
Speaker 2: prompted us to start looking out a little bit more
28:09
Speaker 2: critically at the culture and the pop culture we consumed
28:15
Speaker 2: in the eighties and the nineties of the early two thousands,
28:18
Speaker 2: and how it might look differently were it to be
28:21
Speaker 2: created today.
28:22
Speaker 1: I feel like you must have done a ton of
28:24
Speaker 1: research and watched old interviews and videos about how these
28:30
Speaker 1: women were covered in the media. Then do you remember
28:33
Speaker 1: watching something that really upset you when you were watching
28:36
Speaker 1: with fresh eyes?
28:37
Speaker 2: Well, so my interest in the subject actually goes back
28:40
Speaker 2: to before me too. So at a certain point, Monica
28:46
Speaker 2: Lewinsky wrote an article for Vanity Fair.
28:50
Speaker 1: I will never forget this article.
28:52
Speaker 2: Okay, this is the Wild Gooes is before me too,
28:54
Speaker 2: It's before Donald Trump. And she writes this essay about
28:58
Speaker 2: what she experienced, and we hard for Monica Lewinsky in
29:01
Speaker 2: a decade, like she has basically been in hiding, Like
29:04
Speaker 2: at one point she tried to launch like a handbag
29:08
Speaker 2: line and was just endlessly mocked, and then she sort
29:10
Speaker 2: of just went away and.
29:12
Speaker 1: She became like a punchline of every joke and a
29:16
Speaker 1: lyric in music.
29:18
Speaker 2: Yes, Monica Lewinsky or some version of that, or being
29:21
Speaker 2: Lewinskied is in like dozens and dozens of rap songs. Yeah.
29:28
Speaker 2: So she wrote this essay and I was like, oh
29:31
Speaker 2: my god, I remember consuming and hearing the story about
29:35
Speaker 2: what happened with Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton. I was
29:37
Speaker 2: in high school. I specifically remember the newsweek magazine where
29:43
Speaker 2: I would later ongo to work article describing the whole
29:48
Speaker 2: thing with the cigar and like all of this, like
29:52
Speaker 2: everything that happened between them sexually. And I remember thinking
29:55
Speaker 2: at the time, like who is this woman or like
29:58
Speaker 2: who is this girl? Like I can't like what a slut?
30:01
Speaker 1: Basically I can't believe she did this.
30:03
Speaker 2: I can't believe she did this with the president, and
30:05
Speaker 2: like you know the story about her flashing her thong
30:09
Speaker 2: to him, Like what who does that? Like you're working
30:13
Speaker 2: in the White House.
30:14
Speaker 1: Yep, and she gave him a blowjob in some room
30:18
Speaker 1: and like secretly, And I remember watching the Barbara Walters
30:21
Speaker 1: interview being like this little slut.
30:26
Speaker 2: And that is exactly how she was portrayed and conveyed
30:29
Speaker 2: in the media, Like she was called a little tart
30:32
Speaker 2: word that we don't really use now but back then
30:34
Speaker 2: basically met little slut. There were polls on like reputable
30:38
Speaker 2: news organization websites being like do you think that Monica
30:42
Speaker 2: Lewinsky is basically a slut? And to look back on it,
30:47
Speaker 2: at the time she wrote this Vanity Fair article, I
30:50
Speaker 2: was like, this woman was hardly overrating. She had no
30:56
Speaker 2: power in this situation. Sure we didn't have I have
31:00
Speaker 2: really a complex understanding of power dynamics and the way
31:04
Speaker 2: that sexual harassment played out then, but this was a
31:08
Speaker 2: lot more complicated than it appeared, and certainly, to think
31:12
Speaker 2: about it now, it was much more complicated than what
31:16
Speaker 2: a slut.
31:16
Speaker 1: I reverse everything I once thought. I actually think she's
31:19
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable, but she.
31:20
Speaker 2: Isn't remarkable, and so that is what sparked my initial
31:24
Speaker 2: interest in doing a story about her, and so I
31:27
Speaker 2: tracked her down. I had to make this really long
31:30
Speaker 2: case about why she should consider opening up. She hadn't
31:34
Speaker 2: done the story like this in more than a decade
31:36
Speaker 2: because she'd been totally scorned by everyone in the media.
31:40
Speaker 2: And so that was the first time I was able
31:43
Speaker 2: to retell a woman's story who had been thought about
31:47
Speaker 2: one way through a present day lens. And so from
31:51
Speaker 2: that point forward, this was something that was kind of
31:53
Speaker 2: always in the back of my mind. So then around
31:55
Speaker 2: the time when the Brittany article came out and the
31:58
Speaker 2: documentary and everything else, it was like, yeah, of course,
32:01
Speaker 2: if you look back on so many of these women,
32:04
Speaker 2: there's going to be more complexity. Do the story so she.
32:07
Speaker 1: Was one of the first women to reclaim her story.
32:10
Speaker 1: I also think she was kind of patient zero when
32:12
Speaker 1: it came to cyberbullying. She was and she said in
32:16
Speaker 1: her now viral ted talk that shame can't survive empathy.
32:21
Speaker 1: I'm curious as to what you feel is the case.
32:26
Speaker 1: Has the Internet created more empathy or less?
32:30
Speaker 2: I mean, right now, it seems like less, But there
32:33
Speaker 2: are like waves of Internet, you know, Like I feel like,
32:38
Speaker 2: I don't know, the twenty tens, like the era of
32:40
Speaker 2: tumblet like there was a kind of kinder era of
32:43
Speaker 2: the Internet where maybe we could look back on some
32:46
Speaker 2: of these things and have more empathy. I don't think
32:48
Speaker 2: we're in that right now. But to Monica's credit, I mean,
32:53
Speaker 2: she's really rebranded herself and taken her story back, and
32:58
Speaker 2: she's become this advocate for empathy and an ante bullying
33:02
Speaker 2: activist and all of these things. And I think that
33:05
Speaker 2: people find her story really compelling because she's not trying
33:11
Speaker 2: to deny what happened, and she's, you know, to this day,
33:14
Speaker 2: we'll talk really openly about it. But she's doing that
33:18
Speaker 2: within the context of like what she knew then and
33:21
Speaker 2: what she knows now. And so I think that after
33:26
Speaker 2: her story became kind of a case study, and like
33:30
Speaker 2: looking back on these women and them being able to
33:33
Speaker 2: retell their story and their own words in a way
33:35
Speaker 2: that feels differently now it became a little bit popular
33:40
Speaker 2: to do this with different characters, and it's not you know,
33:44
Speaker 2: I had a hand in that, Like I'm not trying
33:47
Speaker 2: to say I didn't, but it's like a thing now,
33:49
Speaker 2: like in retrospect, revisiting.
33:52
Speaker 1: We just saw it with Pamela Anderson, who I was
33:55
Speaker 1: going to ask you about because you interviewed both Monica
33:57
Speaker 1: and Pamela for Your Peace in twenty twenty one. When
34:01
Speaker 1: you were doing these interviews, did you find any through
34:04
Speaker 1: lines between these women's stories.
34:07
Speaker 2: Well, I think there's a lot of trauma, honestly. And
34:09
Speaker 2: I was just talking about how we don't use trauma
34:12
Speaker 2: in the right way anymore, Like we think everything's traumatic now,
34:14
Speaker 2: but I'm talking about real trauma here.
34:17
Speaker 1: Well, now there's trauma with a capital T and trama
34:19
Speaker 1: the lowercase tea. Yeah.
34:21
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think that the idea that you lose
34:25
Speaker 4: sight of who you really are because the media has
34:28
Speaker 4: created this cartoonish caricature of you, and so that I
34:33
Speaker 4: think was a through line between Monica and scan Pamela Anderson,
34:36
Speaker 4: which is like they didn't even recognize this person that
34:39
Speaker 4: was supposedly them, that was being constantly talked about in
34:44
Speaker 4: the press.
34:45
Speaker 1: So when the article was published, you said that we
34:47
Speaker 1: were living in an era of reappraisals. What era two
34:52
Speaker 1: years later do you think we're living in now?
34:54
Speaker 2: Well, I think we're still living in an era of reappraisals.
34:57
Speaker 2: And that's not a bad thing. It can journalist out
35:00
Speaker 2: a little formulaic, I think. But then again, like I'm
35:05
Speaker 2: doing it too. I should promote my upcoming podcast, which
35:10
Speaker 2: is kind of falling into this trap. But maybe it's
35:12
Speaker 2: not trap. Maybe it's an okay thing where we're looking
35:16
Speaker 2: back at really specific cultural moments from these eras, things
35:20
Speaker 2: like okay, so you have Pamela Anderson, but then what
35:23
Speaker 2: about the swimsuits? You warn't Baywatch? Like that was a
35:26
Speaker 2: piece of iconography from the nineteen nineties that like taught
35:30
Speaker 2: us everything we thought we needed to know about what
35:34
Speaker 2: bodies should look like, or you know, different characters who've
35:38
Speaker 2: gone through things. Anyhow, So looking back on these moments
35:40
Speaker 2: and trying to understand what they can teach us about
35:44
Speaker 2: the past but also about the present. And so I
35:47
Speaker 2: do think we're very much still in a moment of
35:50
Speaker 2: reflection and representation and reclaiming, but trying to look back
35:57
Speaker 2: at some of these stories in a moment where we're
36:00
Speaker 2: also pretty nostalgic. It seems like, you know, like everything
36:04
Speaker 2: everything right now in the culture is a remake of
36:07
Speaker 2: a thing that existed for the past, or it's like
36:09
Speaker 2: some nostalgia driven something, And so I don't like, what
36:13
Speaker 2: is that about. I don't know. That's maybe subject of
36:16
Speaker 2: a different podcast, But I think both things are happening.
36:20
Speaker 1: When you think of these women who have reclaimed their stories,
36:23
Speaker 1: or writers or documentarians who are sort of helping to
36:26
Speaker 1: reclaim some of these women's stories, is there one that
36:29
Speaker 1: you find particularly inspiring?
36:32
Speaker 2: Well, okay, So it's like it's complicated because, Okay, on
36:36
Speaker 2: the one hand, a lot of these films, articles, television
36:41
Speaker 2: series are retelling stories without the permission of the subject.
36:45
Speaker 2: So that was a big controversy with the Hulu show
36:49
Speaker 2: pam and Tommy, which was about the sex tape between
36:52
Speaker 2: Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, her ex husband, that she
36:55
Speaker 2: was not involved in, and it was a fictionalized version
36:58
Speaker 2: of it, and in fact she was really hurt by
37:01
Speaker 2: it and hated that it existed. So like that's one
37:04
Speaker 2: way of going about it. To the other extreme, she
37:07
Speaker 2: kind of clapped back on that in a way because
37:11
Speaker 2: she participated in a Netflix documentary about her life that
37:15
Speaker 2: was actually executive produced or produced. Maybe not like let Me.
37:20
Speaker 2: She actually participated in a Netflix documentary which she was
37:24
Speaker 2: the subject of, that looked all back at her life
37:26
Speaker 2: and a lot of these same things that was produced
37:29
Speaker 2: by her son. So in that case, she was going
37:33
Speaker 2: through her archives, she was reading old diaries, like she
37:36
Speaker 2: was telling a story through her voice. But as a journalist,
37:41
Speaker 2: as a person who creates narratives, like it's really hard
37:44
Speaker 2: to tell a story when the person whose story is involved,
37:50
Speaker 2: sometimes because they obviously have a lot of feelings about
37:53
Speaker 2: how they're going to be conveyed or portrayed and a
37:56
Speaker 2: lot of opinions. So in general, sometimes it can be
37:59
Speaker 2: true to do that, But if the whole point of
38:03
Speaker 2: the project is to reclaim or allow these women to
38:08
Speaker 2: have some say in their narratives, then it seems like
38:12
Speaker 2: you kind of got to get the person involved.
38:15
Speaker 1: Shinead O'Connor just passed away and I started reading more
38:20
Speaker 1: about her story, and a lot of people are comparing
38:23
Speaker 1: her experience with the media to Britney spears experience with
38:26
Speaker 1: the media.
38:27
Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting.
38:28
Speaker 1: I don't know enough to say one way or the other.
38:31
Speaker 1: But where do you land on Britney Spears Because there's
38:34
Speaker 1: always like this conversation I think about the event at
38:39
Speaker 1: hand and then a larger social issue, and with hers,
38:43
Speaker 1: it seemed like the legality of conservatorship. Where did the
38:47
Speaker 1: media treat her wrong? And where do we land now?
38:50
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I mean like it's like thec's will be
38:53
Speaker 2: written about this. It's so complicated. But at the time
38:57
Speaker 2: that Britney Spears was a young star, we were living
38:59
Speaker 2: in a very different media climate. Like tabloid culture was
39:04
Speaker 2: the thing. There was no opportunity for celebrities to speak
39:08
Speaker 2: in their own voices on social media, so consumers relied
39:13
Speaker 2: on tabloids to get like gossip or news about the
39:15
Speaker 2: people that they loved, and that was weird. Did you
39:17
Speaker 2: grow up I grew up in Seattle, Okay.
39:20
Speaker 1: I grew up in Chicago, and I don't I remember
39:22
Speaker 1: like buying magazines at the grocery store to read on
39:26
Speaker 1: like an elliptical or a treadmill, and like I was
39:28
Speaker 1: consuming all of this stuff and my I remember my
39:31
Speaker 1: dad being like, this is nonsense, and I was like, no,
39:33
Speaker 1: it's not.
39:33
Speaker 2: This is trash. Yeah, it's real. That's how it was.
39:36
Speaker 2: And those magazines sold like they were at the checkout
39:40
Speaker 2: counter of the grocery store, and that's how you got
39:42
Speaker 2: celebrity news. And then quickly after that, I remember first
39:45
Speaker 2: moving to New York and reading like these blogs like
39:48
Speaker 2: delisted Perez Hilton the Dirt Easy, Yes exactly. That was
39:53
Speaker 2: basically like scandalous celebrity gothip. That was probably true like
39:58
Speaker 2: a quarter or a fraction of the time, but lots
40:00
Speaker 2: of selacious photos and that was just the culture, and
40:05
Speaker 2: nobody got to have a say or and nobody even
40:08
Speaker 2: was questioning it. Like now people are like, oh, Perez Hilton,
40:12
Speaker 2: who was this sort of very mean spirited character who
40:15
Speaker 2: would put all this commentary on top of these terrible
40:18
Speaker 2: images of all these women's celebrities. Now people are like,
40:21
Speaker 2: what a bully? But back then they were just eating
40:24
Speaker 2: it up. So when the free Brittany movement began, I
40:29
Speaker 2: think I had a little bit of like skepticism around,
40:32
Speaker 2: like what are these fans really know? And like fans
40:35
Speaker 2: are not known to be the most objective individuals, like
40:39
Speaker 2: certainly powerful, but not the most objective, So like, was
40:43
Speaker 2: free Brittany really rooted in fact? And what was really
40:46
Speaker 2: going on? And then I think, as we saw from
40:49
Speaker 2: a lot of the investigative reporting, a lot of it
40:51
Speaker 2: coming from my own outlet at the times, there really
40:56
Speaker 2: were a lot of chooge problems with this conservatorship.
40:59
Speaker 1: That she was in.
41:01
Speaker 2: But then you see she gets quote unquote freed, and
41:06
Speaker 2: nobody is quite satisfied with the way she's acting. And
41:12
Speaker 2: because the fans were part of this movement to free her,
41:16
Speaker 2: it's almost as if they have like replaced I don't know,
41:20
Speaker 2: the tabloids or the media ean like having just a
41:22
Speaker 2: lot of opinions about how she should be, what she
41:26
Speaker 2: should be saying, how grateful she should be, if she
41:28
Speaker 2: should be grateful at all, And it's like this weird
41:32
Speaker 2: ownership in a way. So there's like there's a lot
41:34
Speaker 2: of psychology coursing through a lot of this stuff. But
41:38
Speaker 2: I think that I think Brittany's so complicated and there's
41:42
Speaker 2: the issue of the tabloids, and there's the issue of
41:44
Speaker 2: her not being able to speak for herself, and there's
41:45
Speaker 2: the issue of now that she is on social media,
41:48
Speaker 2: people think the way she's behaving there is really kind
41:52
Speaker 2: of weird, and it is. But also she's been through
41:55
Speaker 2: all of this, so like, maybe let's not judge her
41:58
Speaker 2: and anyway where we think coming so hard to.
42:02
Speaker 1: Watch mental illness play out online, that's part of it.
42:05
Speaker 2: Really, Yeah, I think that is part of it. And
42:08
Speaker 2: you know, I think she's said that she really objects
42:15
Speaker 2: to all of the films being made about her, all
42:17
Speaker 2: of the recent films being made about her, and so
42:20
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, knowing some of these filmmakers,
42:23
Speaker 2: I know that they went to great lengths to be
42:25
Speaker 2: really sensitive in the coverage and everything was rooted in
42:28
Speaker 2: fact and research and fact check. But fair, I mean,
42:32
Speaker 2: maybe in some sense of course, she doesn't want these
42:34
Speaker 2: things made about her. So what is happening now, Well,
42:37
Speaker 2: now she's going to publish her own book, and I'm
42:39
Speaker 2: sure you'll do another podcast episode when that happens, which
42:42
Speaker 2: is reclamation great, but she will be able to once
42:47
Speaker 2: and for all speak in her voice, and how we
42:52
Speaker 2: receive that is a question that remains and will be
42:56
Speaker 2: very interesting to see.
42:58
Speaker 1: I can't wait to read your article about it. So
43:02
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton is the most complicated character of all for me. Yes, yeah,
43:09
Speaker 1: I have coplicated buddy exactly. Well, I have a personal
43:12
Speaker 1: vendetta against her.
43:13
Speaker 2: I think, oh, okay, say war and I'm not.
43:16
Speaker 1: Sure it's her fault. But so there's this clip online.
43:20
Speaker 1: I used to watch Oprah all the time when I
43:22
Speaker 1: was younger and growing up in Chicago particular, we loved
43:25
Speaker 1: it and I was in eighth grade and it was
43:27
Speaker 1: at the height of the Paris Hilton simple life era,
43:30
Speaker 1: and all my friends were obsessed with Paris Hilton. They
43:33
Speaker 1: thought she was the coolest person to walk planet Earth.
43:36
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, like, could not be grosser.
43:40
Speaker 1: And I didn't understand why, Like, what did they think
43:42
Speaker 1: was so cool? Here was this person who was pretending
43:45
Speaker 1: to be so dumb. And then I see an Oprah
43:48
Speaker 1: show and Reese Witherspoon gets on and Oprah asked her
43:52
Speaker 1: some question about it, and she had like such a
43:54
Speaker 1: thick Southern accent. She goes, I just don't think it's
43:57
Speaker 1: cute to be dumb, and then she talks about how
44:00
Speaker 1: like we have stood on the shoulders of women for decades,
44:05
Speaker 1: people who have sacrificed so much, and then we're just
44:08
Speaker 1: gonna take all of that and pretend to be dumb.
44:11
Speaker 1: And it's a beautiful clip. So a few months ago,
44:14
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton was on the View and she wrote a
44:18
Speaker 1: memoir and her lower third her title said author. Now,
44:23
Speaker 1: any other time she had been on The View or
44:25
Speaker 1: any other morning show, it said airis okay, So she
44:29
Speaker 1: went from airis to author And I was thinking to myself,
44:34
Speaker 1: Paris Hilton, the person who was most famous for cultivating
44:38
Speaker 1: that image, had to come clean because she couldn't survive
44:41
Speaker 1: off of the dumb image anymore, because people and especially
44:45
Speaker 1: young women are demanding more. And that made me happy.
44:50
Speaker 1: But when I reflect back on the Girls Gone Wild,
44:52
Speaker 1: I have no sympathy for Paris Hilton.
44:55
Speaker 2: That's so fascinating. I want to watch that work clip
45:00
Speaker 2: and I almost feel like I don't even need to
45:02
Speaker 2: have an opinion here because you have taken us full
45:05
Speaker 2: serve with that story, which conveys kind of amazingly how
45:11
Speaker 2: the culture has shifted.
45:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I felt like, and kudos to women because they
45:16
Speaker 1: were the ones demanding more which is very cool.
45:19
Speaker 2: And I guess, like almost every single one of these instances,
45:23
Speaker 2: it was more complicated. Turns out Paris had trauma in
45:27
Speaker 2: her past, like she had gone to this abusive boarding school,
45:31
Speaker 2: like all of the you know, the fact that there
45:33
Speaker 2: was a sex tape of her felt violating, like there
45:37
Speaker 2: are issues of consent, Like all of these things that
45:40
Speaker 2: were just you know, minimized or simplified. They created these
45:46
Speaker 2: characters that had no dimension and we're just tropes essentially,
45:52
Speaker 2: and now we are learning person by person, piece by piece,
45:55
Speaker 2: but there are more layers to it.
45:58
Speaker 1: In that article, you ad asked the question, what do
46:01
Speaker 1: we owe these women? Looking at the stories now through
46:03
Speaker 1: a modern lens two years later? Do you have any
46:07
Speaker 1: answers or thoughts on that question?
46:09
Speaker 2: Well, I think in some ways they are getting a
46:14
Speaker 2: collective apology, some of them. Anyway, Like we are having
46:18
Speaker 2: these discussions, you're asking the question what do we owe them? Well,
46:22
Speaker 2: like there is some accountability, despite the fact that we
46:25
Speaker 2: may be sort of living in an age of no accountability.
46:29
Speaker 2: And I think people have started to recognize their role
46:34
Speaker 2: in the consumption of these storylines, which in a lot
46:38
Speaker 2: of ways had a deatrial mental effect not only on
46:42
Speaker 2: the woman at the center of the storyline, but on
46:44
Speaker 2: all of us, like we you and I in Chicago
46:47
Speaker 2: and Scattle, we grew up on these stories, We grew
46:50
Speaker 2: up on these messages, like we internalized them, and how
46:54
Speaker 2: did that affect us and the way we saw our
46:57
Speaker 2: roles and our place in the world as women?
47:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I think that's you just gave me
47:04
Speaker 1: chills because there was this idea of like, we will
47:07
Speaker 1: put them in their place if they act out.
47:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
47:10
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you have any personal regrets that
47:13
Speaker 1: you had to grapple with when it came to your
47:15
Speaker 1: own work, or your own relationship with the media, or
47:18
Speaker 1: a story you wish you would have covered differently? In hindsight,
47:21
Speaker 1: I think one of.
47:22
Speaker 2: The interesting things about that question is that often how
47:27
Speaker 2: much I was able to speak up or disagree with
47:30
Speaker 2: the storyline or do my own story on the subject
47:33
Speaker 2: or whatever it might be, dependent on how much power
47:37
Speaker 2: I had. And so while early in my career, in
47:41
Speaker 2: that two thousand and seven Jass World at Newsweek, where
47:46
Speaker 2: this cover story claiming the girls Gone Wild effect was
47:49
Speaker 2: like kind of finger pointing and finger wagging at women
47:53
Speaker 2: my age, I had no authority or real voice for
47:58
Speaker 2: anyone to listen to, just like I think that's kind
48:02
Speaker 2: of fucked up, or like, I think you're approaching that
48:04
Speaker 2: story the wrong way, because I was like hardly more
48:07
Speaker 2: than an inter But as I have gone on in
48:10
Speaker 2: my career and as I have risen, I have had
48:13
Speaker 2: more power to change the way the narratives are told.
48:16
Speaker 2: And I'm sure this is true for you as well,
48:19
Speaker 2: And I think that's what's different, Like there are more
48:21
Speaker 2: people like us who are in the media today who
48:25
Speaker 2: can bring a critical lens to these stories that just
48:27
Speaker 2: didn't exist, Like there weren't as many women in past eras,
48:32
Speaker 2: and there weren't as many senior women, and the cultural
48:34
Speaker 2: climate was different. So now we can actually write the
48:38
Speaker 2: stories or produce the stories, or film the stories in
48:42
Speaker 2: the ways that we want to, not the ways we
48:45
Speaker 2: think we have to because that's the only way they'll
48:47
Speaker 2: get published.
48:48
Speaker 1: I love that answer, and I think it's going on.
48:51
Speaker 1: What is your wildest day in a newsroom in your
48:54
Speaker 1: entire career?
48:55
Speaker 2: I mean so many different ones. So my first job
48:59
Speaker 2: was on the over night cops beat at the Boston Globe,
49:03
Speaker 2: which meant that I would show up at midnight and
49:04
Speaker 2: I would leave it. I don't know if I forget
49:07
Speaker 2: what time in the morning. And it was my job
49:10
Speaker 2: to listen to the police scanner and when there was
49:14
Speaker 2: like a shooting, a burglary, three alarm fire, a water
49:18
Speaker 2: main break, like all of these things, race to my
49:22
Speaker 2: vehicle as fast as I possibly could before the days
49:26
Speaker 2: of GPS, and find this location and go interview subjects.
49:30
Speaker 1: And that was absolute hell.
49:32
Speaker 2: First of all, nobody fucking wants to talk to you
49:34
Speaker 2: once something terrible has just happened. Second of all, it
49:37
Speaker 2: was the coldest winter in Boston since like eighteen twelve
49:40
Speaker 2: or something, so you would try to take notes in
49:41
Speaker 2: your pen would freeze, so you had to learn to
49:43
Speaker 2: like bring a pencil. Third, there was always some editor
49:47
Speaker 2: who was like literally screaming at you as you tried
49:50
Speaker 2: to race out of the office to get to your part,
49:52
Speaker 2: to get to the thing, because you were racing every
49:54
Speaker 2: single other publication to get there first. So that was
49:57
Speaker 2: probably my craziest era.
50:00
Speaker 1: That sounds terrible.
50:02
Speaker 2: You'd have to want to be a journalist. I almost
50:05
Speaker 2: didn't become a journalist. I almost didn't. Yeah, Like I
50:08
Speaker 2: was like, I don't know that I'm cut out for this,
50:10
Speaker 2: Like I might go into nonprofit work.
50:12
Speaker 1: Or something, and I really have to love what you
50:15
Speaker 1: do so much to push through that.
50:17
Speaker 2: But like turns out you don't have to love that.
50:19
Speaker 2: There's a very different kind of worlds thing that you
50:21
Speaker 2: can do it that I ultimately found. And so by
50:23
Speaker 2: the time I made it to New York and was
50:26
Speaker 2: working as an unpaid intern and working at Newsweek, I
50:29
Speaker 2: was like so happy to just be in like a
50:32
Speaker 2: civilized magazine newsroom where like I would write things and
50:37
Speaker 2: we would like have snacks, and like it was warm
50:40
Speaker 2: and there was heat that felt really different.
50:42
Speaker 1: That's awesome. What is your happy place?
50:46
Speaker 2: I mean, as like a cynical New Yorker, We're not
50:49
Speaker 2: happy ever, So I don't know how to answer that question,
50:53
Speaker 2: but I guess just like snuggling with my dog and
50:57
Speaker 2: chilling at my house.
50:59
Speaker 1: That's so sweet. What is something you used to think
51:02
Speaker 1: people were exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself.
51:06
Speaker 2: Oh, this is sort of cliche, but I guess it's
51:10
Speaker 2: what we're talking about here. People proclaim everything sexist, or
51:14
Speaker 2: at least they did for a while. Like there's a
51:15
Speaker 2: lot of like that's the patriarchy talking, and on some level,
51:22
Speaker 2: I take that with a grain of salt because I'm like,
51:25
Speaker 2: prove it to me, like I need data or investigative report,
51:29
Speaker 2: like I'm a journalist, I'm not an actist.
51:31
Speaker 1: Whatever.
51:32
Speaker 2: But if you take there are just so many little
51:35
Speaker 2: things in the world, such as the level of your
51:38
Speaker 2: air conditioning that if you bother to spend the time
51:41
Speaker 2: getting to the root of it, you will find is
51:45
Speaker 2: actually created for men's temperatures in the office and men's
51:50
Speaker 2: body types, and also the clothes that men wore, which
51:52
Speaker 2: were like suits. And there are so many little things
51:56
Speaker 2: like that, such as like the location of women's bathrooms
51:59
Speaker 2: in like this Senate building, or other little tiny things
52:03
Speaker 2: that you.
52:04
Speaker 1: Might tell you my favorite one, Yeah, I chastise people
52:07
Speaker 1: at the airport because so when you go through security
52:12
Speaker 1: and you lift your suitcase onto the conveyor belt, it
52:16
Speaker 1: was built for a six foot one male. Yeah, I'm sure,
52:18
Speaker 1: because the children and women are way too short.
52:22
Speaker 2: Same with the overhead bins, probably right.
52:24
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know about those.
52:26
Speaker 2: I mean they're certainly too tall for me to get.
52:29
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, there's so many I mean, just like
52:32
Speaker 2: infrastructure architecture, like if you dig deep enough, you will
52:37
Speaker 2: find that most things in the world were built with menamite.
52:41
Speaker 2: The height of a toilet like actually turns out you
52:45
Speaker 2: have any digestive issues, you probably know this, but like
52:48
Speaker 2: height of toilet and position is really important, and it's
52:53
Speaker 2: made for tall mens. So if you're a woman sitting
52:55
Speaker 2: on a trailert, your feet are like dangling.
52:57
Speaker 1: I forgot what it's called. Maybe it's the golden ratio,
52:59
Speaker 1: but it's all of architect Like, architecture was built for
53:03
Speaker 1: a six foot one male. So countertops, bathrooms, et cetera.
53:06
Speaker 1: And now there's this whole movement with human first design
53:08
Speaker 1: that I love.
53:09
Speaker 2: Yeah.
53:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, they think about like the human using the place
53:13
Speaker 1: or the item before they think of the item.
53:15
Speaker 2: That's me even like Lavalier, like lave mics they're from
53:20
Speaker 2: a man's lapel. Yeah, they're for a man's lapel. And
53:23
Speaker 2: so if you're ever public speaking and it's the sound
53:26
Speaker 2: guy is almost always a man and he has to
53:28
Speaker 2: like basically touch your breast area in order to hear
53:32
Speaker 2: this thing, Like you're just like, yeah, no, no woman created.
53:36
Speaker 1: That, definitely not. Swimsuits were awful when I was growing up,
53:39
Speaker 1: and then women started making swimsuits and now I can
53:42
Speaker 1: find them.
53:43
Speaker 2: I mean bras too. And also like I have recently
53:46
Speaker 2: turned forty, and so now I and all of my
53:49
Speaker 2: friends have had to get our first mammograms. And like,
53:53
Speaker 2: if that machine was invented by a woman, I would
53:57
Speaker 2: be so shocked, because like, that is not that is
54:01
Speaker 2: just not a functional way of doing this. I heard.
54:04
Speaker 1: It's painful.
54:05
Speaker 2: It's painful, it's like flat, like it's just not made
54:10
Speaker 2: for Woe's body. And turns out usually, I mean often,
54:14
Speaker 2: they can't get a good read using that machine, so
54:16
Speaker 2: then they have to give you an ultrasound anyway, which
54:18
Speaker 2: like they should just give in the first place, but
54:20
Speaker 2: that's more expensive, so of course they don't anyhow, So
54:22
Speaker 2: many medical devices.
54:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, a book that changed your life, something you
54:28
Speaker 1: think everyone should read.
54:29
Speaker 2: I just reread Backlash by Susan Flute, and she is
54:33
Speaker 2: not only a brilliant and really fun writer, but she's
54:37
Speaker 2: just so fucking smart, and I think everyone should read
54:39
Speaker 2: that book. It came out in the nineties and it
54:41
Speaker 2: was about how nineties pop culture was actually a backlash
54:46
Speaker 2: to gains in feminism. But you could almost just like
54:49
Speaker 2: swap the years and swap the titles and it would
54:52
Speaker 2: describe today.
54:53
Speaker 1: Okay, do a pretty smart question, So tell me we're virtual,
54:57
Speaker 1: So just tell me when to stop.
54:59
Speaker 4: Stop?
55:00
Speaker 1: What lesson has taken you the longest to learn?
55:03
Speaker 2: I think to trust your gut. It was like into
55:06
Speaker 2: my thirties that I finally started to recognize that, like
55:09
Speaker 2: when something wasn't righted, or like I really did know
55:12
Speaker 2: the answer and thought I didn't, or whatever might be.
55:15
Speaker 2: I had a feeling in my stuff that you could
55:18
Speaker 2: literally feel, and I had spent many years just ignoring that,
55:22
Speaker 2: and so I've tried to pay attention and listen to
55:25
Speaker 2: it and like, trust myself.
55:27
Speaker 1: Last question, the smartest decision you've ever made.
55:30
Speaker 2: So I didn't say this when you asked the question,
55:32
Speaker 2: but after the Boston Globe terrible job my, when I
55:36
Speaker 2: was thinking of believing journalism, one of my college professors
55:39
Speaker 2: was like, just you sure, you could like go into
55:42
Speaker 2: nonprofits or you could go into something else, but you're
55:45
Speaker 2: going to have so much more impact writing your words
55:49
Speaker 2: for a public audience, and you're good at it, so
55:52
Speaker 2: stick with it. And so I did, and I found
55:55
Speaker 2: my place in it.
55:56
Speaker 1: Have you spoken to that professor?
55:58
Speaker 2: Yes, I love him. We stand touch.
56:00
Speaker 1: That's so awesome. It's like one person can encourage you
56:04
Speaker 1: and it can change everything totally.
56:06
Speaker 2: He was so wise.
56:08
Speaker 1: Thank you. I really appreciate your time.
56:10
Speaker 2: You're so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.
56:17
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good
56:20
Speaker 1: day to have a good day. I'll see you next
56:23
Speaker 1: week